Archive for October, 2010
DIY multilayer lithography at 10 microns
Posted by lekernel in Web discoveries on October 29, 2010
This excellent paper “A maskless photolithographic prototyping system using a low-cost consumer projector and a microscope” explains how to build a cheap lithography system whose main parts are a microscope and a DLP projector. The system is claimed to support multiple layers up to a resolution of 10 microns.
The use of a DLP projector as image source elegantly and cheaply solves the problem of multilayer alignment.
Chosen excerpts from the paper:
“This overlay technique is easy to implement by placing the overlay in the master-slide mode of presentation software such as PowerPoint.”
“Creation of exposure slides using presentation software is easy. A typical slide show consists of a sequence of slides, with the design projected first in red for alignment and focusing, followed by a blue exposure slide for a controlled time, followed by a new red image to align the next pattern.”
“Students have used this system for a variety of research projects and upper-division laboratory exercises. These have included making optical diffraction patterns, catalyst pads for the growth of carbon nanotubes, and a variety of micron-scale symbols and signs. We have our used our thin-film evaporator in combination with this process to make metal patterns using the liftoff technique, where metal is deposited on the patterns made in the photoresist, and the remaining photoresist is then dissolved, leaving metal patterns stenciled on the substrates. Such films allow millimeter-scale electrical contact pads to be made for micron-scale objects such as thin-film resistors and long carbon nanotubes. Metal patterns on glass substrates should be suitable for creating custom two-dimensional binary diffractive optical elements similar to those used with inexpensive laser pointers.”
Milkymist @Brandenburger Linux-Infotag 2010
Just a quick note to inform you that the project will be exhibited and quickly presented during BLIT on November 6th in Potsdam (near Berlin). See you there if you are around!
Talk about the Milkymist project at RMLL/LSM2010 (French)
Get the original video from Free Electrons.
Milkymist SoC 0.9 is out
Upgrade your board now to the latest version of MM SoC that brings significant improvements:
- Extensive Navré core testing – re-using the Python-based test suite from simulavr
- Navré bugfixes – as a consequence of the aforementioned testing
- Wishbone burst support in L2 cache for faster memory access from CPU
- Partial crossbar Wishbone switch, solves Ethernet FIFO overflow problems when CPU is running from flash
- LM32 JTAG debugger support (Michael Walle). We can now use OpenOCD to debug the system live!
- Support for USB input devices (mouse + keyboard). USB bugs remain, but it’s becoming to be usable.
- Text console in BIOS and demo firmware – use them standalone without a serial terminal. Only German USB keyboard layout supported at the moment.
- MIDI THRU support
- New memory map (Michael Walle)
- New flash map to support the multiple bitstreams and the rescue mode
- Standby and rescue bitstreams. After power is applied, the board is in standby mode. Press the middle pushbutton (#2) to boot it. If pushbutton #1 is pressed at the same time, rescue mode will be enabled.
- ICAP write support – we’re not doing partial reconfiguration with it, only reboot the FPGA back to the standby bitstream
- Fixed DDC EDID read, now works reliably with all monitors
- Reduced frequency to 80MHz – we’ll try to increase it when Xilinx fixes its software
- Memory tester core
- Board revision readout
- Fixed SDRAM reset bug – now the I/O calibration no longer randomly fails after a reset
- Code cleanups
