Zak, Great question. You did not say positive or negative resist. I guessed positive. My first input hard contact implies sometrapped air and the UV exposure breaks down the oxygen in the trapped air to Ozone and or oxygen plasma. If Ozone it eats the resist and gives thinner resist so faster develop. If Oxygen plasma it eats the resist and the olasma has a strong UV component so it exposes harder and you get faster develop. Colleague Ken Sautter says probably easier Vacuum exposure pulls solvent out of resist giving denser resist longer develop. At least 3 possibilities. Bill Moffat -----Original Message----- From: mems-talk-bounces+bmoffat=yieldengineering.com@memsnet.org [mailto:mems-talk-bounces+bmoffat=yieldengineering.com@memsnet.org] On Behalf Of Zak Clark Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 12:20 PM To: mems-talk@memsnet.org Subject: [mems-talk] Hard vs. Vacuum Contact Lithography In our wafer processing we interchangeably use hard and vacuum contact lithography depending on the wafer geometry (and alignment tolerance). We have found that simply reducing the develop time, while maintaining all other parameters, results in a comparable process. So, why would a pattern exposed in hard contact develop faster than the same pattern in vacuum contact? Thanks, Zak Clark OptiComp Corp.