Heidelberg Instruments Enhances DWL 66+ Lithography System, Achieving Market-Leading 200 nm Resolution and 65,536 Grayscale Levels
About Optica
15 July 2025
Heidelberg Instruments Enhances DWL 66+ Lithography System, Achieving Market-Leading 200 nm Resolution and 65,536 Grayscale Levels
Heidelberg, Germany – Heidelberg Instruments has made significant performance upgrades to its renowned DWL 66+ direct-write lithography system, solidifying its position as the ultimate research tool for microfabrication. The system now delivers a market-leading minimum feature size of 200 nm and advanced grayscale capabilities with 65,536 levels, empowering researchers to push the boundaries of innovation in different dimensions.
The new High-Resolution Mode, Write Mode XR, achieves an unsurpassed combination of resolution, quality, and speed. Its 200 nm minimum feature capability allows for the fabrication of highly complex micro- and nanostructures, enabling applications in quantum devices, optics, and photonics that previously required more time-consuming e-beam lithography. This advancement accelerates development cycles and frees up cost-intensive e-beam systems for their most demanding tasks.
Complementing the high resolution is the system's professional-grade grayscale lithography. With an unprecedented 65,536 intensity levels, the DWL 66+ can create intricate 2.5D microstructures, such as micro-lenses and other micro-optical devices, with outstanding surface smoothness in photoresists up to 150 µm thick.
With 30 years of continuous development and over 400 units installed, the DWL 66+ is a proven, robust, and extremely flexible platform for R&D and rapid prototyping. These latest enhancements reinforce its value, offering users a powerful combination of extreme resolution and operational flexibility.
For more information on the DWL 66+ lithography system, please visit: https://heidelberg-instruments.com/product/dwl-66-laser-lithography-system/
With 200 nm minimum feature size and Grayscale exposures with 65,536 levels, the DWL 66+ delivers unrivaled versatility, professional-grade grayscale capabilities, and the highest resolution of any direct-write laser system on the market.
Source: Heidelberg Instruments Mikrotechnik GmbH.
DWL 66+ exposure of concentric rings with a linewidth of approximately 200 nm and a pitch of 700 nm in positive photoresist.
Source: Heidelberg Instruments Mikrotechnik GmbH.
The DWL 66+ enables blazed gratings were designed with angles varying from 10° to 70° to suit different diffraction requirements.
Source: Heidelberg Instruments Mikrotechnik GmbH.
About Heidelberg Instruments Mikrotechnik GmbH:
With over 40 years of experience and well over 1,500 systems installed in more than 50 countries, Heidelberg Instruments is a global leader in design, development and production of high-precision laser lithography systems, maskless aligners, and nanofabrication systems offering solutions from tabletop tools to high-end photomask manufacturing equipment. The versatile systems enable a broad spectrum of surface structuring on the micro- and nanoscale, including 2D-patterning and the creation of 2.5D features by Grayscale lithography. Due to their flexibility, the systems are valuable assets to leading universities and R&D institutes around the world, as well as to industrial production facilities. Typical fields of application include micro-optics and photonics, electronics and sensors, semiconductors and advanced packaging, next-generation display manufacturing, quantum devices, MEMS, microfluidics, 2D materials, photomask production, and many others.
Contact
Sonja Pfeuffer
Head of Marketing & Communications
press@heidelberg-instruments.com
Further information
https://heidelberg-instruments.com/
