Analysis of the blurring in stencil lithography

A quantitative analysis of blurring and its dependence on the stencil-substrate gap and the deposition parameters in stencil lithography, a high resolution shadow mask technique, is presented. The blurring is manifested in two ways: first, the structure directly deposited on the substrate is larger than the stencil aperture due to geometrical factors, and second, a halo of material is formed surrounding the deposited structure, presumably due to surface diffusion. The blurring is studied as a function of the gap using dedicated stencils that allow a controlled variation of the gap. Our results show a linear relationship between the gap and the blurring of the directly deposited structure. In our configuration, with a material source of approximately 5 mm and a source-substrate distance of 1 m, we find that a gap size of approximately 10 microm enlarges the directly deposited structures by approximately 50 nm. The measured halo varies from 0.2 to 3 microm in width depending on the gap, the stencil aperture size and other deposition parameters. We also show that the blurring can be reduced by decreasing the nominal deposition thickness, the deposition rate and the substrate temperature.