Improving the imaging quality of MOEs in DMD-based maskless lithography

Digital-micromirror device (DMD)-based maskless lithography technique has been applied to fabricate microoptical elements (MOEs). Due to the binary pulse-width modulation in DMD, however, some ruled corrugations will appear on the aerial image of MOEs when a laser light is used as exposure source. In this paper, the forming mechanism of the corrugations is explored and simulated annealing algorithm is adopted to remove the corrugations. The experimental results demonstrate that DMD-based maskless lithography technique is an effective tool for the fabrication of MOEs. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.