Test for optical systems in laser projection imaging for PCB

Projection imaging is one of the most important steps in the fabrication of Printed Circuit Board. In order to meet the increasing demand for higher resolution, speed and larger area of imaging, a novel Laser Projection Imaging (LPI) has been developed to take the place of the conventional Hg lamp exposure. We set up a system with resolution 10μm over large exposure area of 460mm×610mm on substrate materials. The system is available by the combination of three main parts: an XeF excimer laser with a wavelength of 351nm and single pulse energy of 120mJ, an illumination system with numerical aperture (NA) value of 0.02, and a double telecentric optical projection lens with NA value of 0.025. Such designs can theoretically meet the demand of actual lithography. However, experiments have shown that the propagation loss ratio of laser power from the light source to the substrate can be up to 50% or more so as to hardly achieve the expected results. In this paper, we present our results of experiments under different conditions on laser projection imaging equipment, and meanwhile, parameters such as gas lifetime, pulse repetition rate, exposure dose, as well as the optical lose of quartz microlens array are analyzed. Finally, we acquired the optimum exposure parameters.