Abstract
Progress of lithography has helped to spearhead the semiconductor industry to follow Moore's law to sustain improvement of performance and reduction of cost for decades. The MEMS industry, having started later and being less developed in economy of scale, can take advantage of the experience of semiconductor patterning to make MEMS patterning cheaper and faster. In this paper, possible better paths of lithography progression are proposed. Some semiconductor methods and some MEMS-specific methods to extend the depth of focus are covered. The multi-beam maskless system is examined for its suitability for MEMS to remove the difficulties of existing lithography systems for MEMS. ©2010 IEEE.