Fabrication Process & Applications of HEBS Glass Mask Technology

Surfaces with 3D microstructures are required in several fields of microtechnologies. Many of these microtechnologies have been staged primarily in research laboratories of universities and national laboratories in the past twenty years, because there has been no economical means to mass fabricate these microstructures with high precision.

HEBS-glass mask technology allows for the fabrication of master masks that will enable the manufacturing of completely arbitrary surface profiles using semiconductor fabrication processes. This means that any imaginable optical requirement that can be designed can be built using HEBS-glass gray scale mask technology.

Listed below are just a few of the potential new and existing applications:

Micro-optics:

• Diffractive optical elements (DOE)


• Micro-mirror arrays and micro-prism arrays


• Surface relief height standards and slope standards


• Micro-splitter array for color separation (i.e. to replace the color filter array of LCD’s)


• Lenslet arrays including refractive micro-lens array and diffractive micro-lens array


• Diode laser couplers


• Diffraction gratings, fan-out gratings


• Beam shaping and homogenizing


• Aberration compensation


• Holographic optical elements (HOE), computer generated holograms (CGH)


• CD players: objective lens of laser head


• DVD players: glass HOE, plastic HOE, micro-prism, 3 beam tracking


• Bar code scanners


• Adaptive optics


• Fill-factor enhancement


• Optical interconnects


• Beam multiplexing

Integrated circuits: via masks for sloped vias to improve step coverage in multilayer metallization, and V-shaped grooves for dielectric isolation in high voltage applications.

Magnetic disk drives: read write heads, sliders.

Micro-electro-mechanical (MEM) devices: sensors and actuators in automotive, machine tools, robotics, and medical instrumentation, also devices for applications in micro valves, inertial microsensors, micromachine RF switches, GPS component miniaturization.

Fiber optics telecommunications: two dimensional fan-out gratings, optical interconnect, signal switching, fiber pigtailing, and DOE to couple light from a laser into a fiber.

Micro-opto-electro-mechanical (MOEM) devices: laser scanners, optical shutters, dynamic micro-mirrors, optical choppers and optical switches.

Hybrid circuits:  binary masks required for contact printing of large number of prints without damage to the glass mask or pattern and with tight tolerance of line width.  This application utilizes in particular the following properties of HEBS-Glass masks: (1) the mechanical and chemical durability of an all-glass mask with an image inside the glass (without chrome or any coating), (2) electron beam direct write mask without any post-exposure processing steps, line width is reproducible from plate to plate to better than 0.1 micron, because there are no resist developing and chrome etching steps.