Improved flexibility with grayscale fabrication of calcium fluoride homogenizers

High quality and highly uniform illumination is a critical component for advanced lithography systems and wafer inspection tools. Homogenizer elements fabricated in calcium fluoride have demonstrated good performance for deep UV applications. Grayscale photolithography allows for the fabrication of single-sided micro lens array (MLA) elements with excellent optical performance. The MLA offers some significant advantages over crossed cylinders fabricated using grayscale photolithography processes, including the reduction in the number of fabrication steps and the added flexibility of manufacturing noncylindrical surface geometries. This research presentation reviews the fabrication process and compares grayscale crossed cylindrical arrays and MLAs in terms of their capabilities and performance.