Photomask

A photomask is an opaque plate with transparent areas that allow light to shine through in a defined pattern. Photomasks are commonly used in photolithography for the production of integrated circuits (ICs or "chips") to produce a pattern on a thin wafer of material (usually silicon). Several masks are used in turn, each one reproducing a layer of the completed design, and together known as a mask set. For IC production in the 1960s and early 1970s, an opaque rubylith film laminated onto a transparent mylar sheet was used. The design of one layer was cut into the rubylith, initially by hand on an illuminated drafting table (later by machine (plotter)) and the unwanted rubylith was peeled off by hand, forming the master image of that layer of the chip. Increasingly complex and thus larger chips required larger and larger rubyliths, eventually even filling the wall of a room. (Eventually this whole process was replaced by the optical pattern generator to produce the master image). At this point the master image could be arrayed into a multi-chip image called a reticle. The reticle was originally a 10X image of the chip. The reticle was by step-and-repeater photolithography and etching used to produce a photomask with image-size the same as the final chip. The photomask might be used directly in the fab or be used as master-photomask to produce the final actual working photomasks. As feature size shrank, the only way to properly focus the image was to place it in direct contact with the wafer. These contact aligners often lifted some of the photoresist off the wafer and onto the photomask and it had to be cleaned or discarded. This drove the adoption of reverse master photomasks (see above), which were used to produce (with contact photolithography and etching) the needed many actual working photomasks. Later, projection photo-lithography meant photomask lifetime was indefinite. Still later direct-step-on-wafer stepper photo-lithography used reticles directly and ended the use of photomasks. Photomask materials changed over time.