Evanescent Light Exposing System under Nitrogen Purge for Nano-Stereolithography

Micro devices have been attracting attention accompanying industrial development in recent years. Higher-level microprocessing technique to produce them is demanded. The purpose of this study is to establish the novel technique to satisfy 3 functions: sub-μm process resolution, 3-dimensional flexibility and rapidity. This report proposed a nano-stereolithography method using evanescent light instead of propagating light in order to achieve the required functions. However, there are some important problems in exposing and curing process because of oxygen dissolved in photosensitive resin. Nitrogen purge was introduced to exposing unit to remove oxygen from the resin, which allowed us to solve the problem in exposing and curing process.