Advances in spray coating technologies for MEMS, 3DICs and additional applications

Photolithography is a core technology for the manufacturing of complimentary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits (IC) and one process step in photolithography is the application of the photoresist. This is normally done using spin coating. Micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) manufacturing leverages the process technologies developed for CMOS manufacturing and therefore spin coating is normally used for the application of photoresist and other materials in the MEMS manufacturing processes. Spin coating is based on depositing the photoresist on the substrate and then rotating or spinning the substrate to leave a thin and uniform layer behind. Spin coating is a very useful and well understood technology but it has fundamental limitations with respect to wafer topography, non-round substrates, fragile substrates, oversized substrates and material consumption.