Recent Advances in Graticule and Mask Making

During the last ten years there has been an increasing demand for graticules, grids and scales of all types, which are required for use as part of precision optical systems. The accuracy specified has been increasing, and the line width has been decreasing, to suit the latest generation of instruments so that we are now faced with the limits set by optical diffraction. A similar trend has been experienced in the electronics industry with demands for smaller microcircuit mask patterns with ever-increasing complexity. Automatic machinery for producing these very small components has been developed and microphotography, associated with the use of photo resists for copying micro images, now plays an important part in the production process.