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Low-cost photolithography system for cell biology labs

  • Soft lithography, a tool widely applied in biology and life sciences with numerous applications, uses the soft molding of photolithography-generated master structures by polymers. The central part of a photolithography set-up is a mask-aligner mostly based on a high-pressure mercury lamp as an ultraviolet (UV) light source. This type of light source requires a high level of maintenance and shows a decreasing intensity over its lifetime, influencing the lithography outcome. In this paper, we present a low-cost, bench-top photolithography tool based on ninety-eight 375 nm light-emitting diodes (LEDs). With approx. 10 W, our presented lithography set-up requires only a fraction of the energy of a conventional lamp, the LEDs have a guaranteed lifetime of 1000 h, which becomes noticeable by at least 2.5 to 15 times more exposure cycles compared to a standard light source and with costs less than 850 C it is very affordable. Such a set-up is not only attractive to small academic and industrial fabrication facilities who want to enable work with the technology of photolithography and cannot afford a conventional set-up, but also microfluidic teaching laboratories and microfluidic research and development laboratories, in general, could benefit from this cost-effective alternative. With our self-built photolithography system, we were able to produce structures from 6 μm to 50 μm in height and 10 μm to 200 μm in width. As an optional feature, we present a scaled-down laminar flow hood to enable a dust-free working environment for the photolithography process.

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Metadaten
Author of HS ReutlingenNaggay, Benjamin; Frey, Kerstin; Schneider, Markus; Athanasopulu, Kiriaki; Lorenz, Günter; Kemkemer, Ralf
URN:urn:nbn:de:bsz:rt2-opus4-35228
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1515/cdbme-2021-2140
ISSN:2364-5504
Erschienen in:Current directions in biomedical engineering
Publisher:De Gruyter
Place of publication:Berlin
Document Type:Journal article
Language:English
Publication year:2021
Tag:laminar flow hood; low-cost; photolithography
Volume:7
Issue:2
Page Number:4
First Page:550
Last Page:553
DDC classes:570 Biowissenschaften, Biologie
Open access?:Ja
Licence (German):License Logo  Creative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International