Reusable Thin Stainless Steel Shadow Mask Fabrication using Electron Discharge Machining

A method to fabricate thin stainless steel shadow mask has been presented in this work. A 200 μm thick stainless steel sheet metal has been utilized to fabricate a shadow mask of our interest using Wire-Cut Electron Discharge Machining (EDM). The fabricated mask can be used in any physical vapor deposition (PVD) process for direct deposition of thin film patterns over the given substrate. In this paper thermal evaporation technique is used to fabricate aluminum thin films over flexible polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates with the developed shadow mask. This method can be used when there is a compromise in size and scale can be tolerated until 200 μm to several millimeter of cutting geometry. Thus, requirement of the complicated and time-consuming procedure of photolithography process can be eliminated to realize a pattern directly over the desired surface. This method also overcomes the issues of shadowing effect compared to the acrylic masks which are usually much thicker and developed using laser cutting method.