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YouTuber and former neurobiologist turned software program engineer Zachary Tong has printed a video on a homebrew machine designed for laser lithography all the way down to micron-sized options, as a part of the “MakerFoundry” venture for DIY semiconductor fabrication.
“Photolithography is solely a course of to create a sample onto a photoresist,” Tong explains. “Most individuals are most likely aware of PCB growth and etching, and it is the identical concept — simply shrunk all the way down to a really small scale with the intention to fabricate transistors, or MEMS, or microfluidics, something on the micron stage. It is a type of maskless lithography, which means that it straight writes the sample onto the substrate slightly than utilizing an intermediate masks that you simply first generate after which venture via.”
In impact, what Tong has put collectively is a laser etcher — solely working at scales an order of magnitude smaller than the width of a human hair. In testing, the gadget was confirmed to etch traces between one and three microns broad — across the dimension of a micro organism.
“[That] provides you an concept of the capabilities of a machine like this,” Tong says, “basically cobbled along with aluminum extrusions and 3D-printed components.”
The gadget itself is break up into three key sections: An optical system on the rear, an electronics part within the center, then an XY stage and microscope goal on the entrance — all pushed by a low-cost ultraviolet diode laser, cleaned up by passing the beam via what Tong describes as ” a sort of optical breadboard” with a metallic pinhole to spherical off the elliptical beam form and enhance the ultimate end result.
Full particulars of the construct can be found on the Breaking Faucets YouTube channel, together with a have a look at the issues remaining to be solved with the design, with further info out there on the MakerFoundry Hackaday.io web page.
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