This article was originally featured in our Tech Tips Tuesday series on LinkedIn, where we share technical know-how directly from our team of expert optical engineers and the Zemax Community.  

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Tech Tip Tuesdays with Zemax: Photolithography

Photolithography can be used to pattern wafers for semiconductor applications. This is typically done with a DUV source (Deep Ultraviolet laser) and ether a continuously moving liquid or a bath tank. These optical systems have the same issues with temperature change found in any laser system. Last month I wrote about using Ansys Mechanical with the OpticStudio STAR Module, it works with Fluent an Ansys CFD tool too.

The use of a CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software like Fluent, can be very useful for not only modeling the liquid part of these systems but also dealing with heat incident to the optics from convection currents off other optics or objects in the system. After modeling the convection currents in Fluent. It is possible to use the results from Fluent as inputs to Mechanical to bring those temperatures and pressures in for analysis. Then with ACT script for Mechanical the temperatures and deformations to the optical system can be exported to the STAR Module for use in OpticStudio.

Read the full Article in the Zemax Community Forum: 

Tech Tip Tuesday Photolithography; a workflow with STAR & Fluent

Try the OpticStudio STAR Module capabilities for yourself, request a free trial today! 

Author:
Steven LaCava
Senior Application Engineer
Zemax an Ansys Company