Am I missing something? In deed PMMA being organic can outgas in a vacuum
system. To what level it will contaminate a sputtering system is open for
discussion. Many people use photoresist and other polymers in a sputtering
system to perform lift-off lithography without much problem. I guess it
depends on what else you want to deposit and how clean the system needs to be
for other deposition operations. As far as E-beam lithography being done in
UHV, I thought the litho process including steppers were at atmosphere when
operating. Is this not true? So what relationship is there between litho and
sputtering with respect to vacuum? I am curious
Bob Henderson