Since starting of the project in June, 2005, the scientists and technicians in IOE have made pioneering innovation, and obtained many breakthroughs in technology. 3500W high-power mercury lamp and fly’s eye lens smoothing diffraction lamp are adopted in the mask aligner, achieving large-area and high-uniform illumination and improving system resolution. At the same time, automatic ball-bearing air-float leveling and focusing technology and CCD image automatic aligning technology are used to make automatization of the whole system a significant improvement. The mask aligner is suitable for 18-inch mask, its exposure area reaches 430mmx430mm, and its resolution <=3um. The aligner is characterized by reliable performance, easy to operation, and high- automatization, and can be widely applied to ultra-large area micro-fabrication and production in the fields of large screen non-crystalline Si thin-film transistor, liquid crystal displayer (TFT-LCD), high laser shaping large-scale grating, high precision coded disc, etc.

This mask aligner developed successfully in IOE fills the technology gap in the field of ultra-large area lithographic equipment and plays an active role in promoting the technical progress in this field.