June 2006

Silverhalide Photomasks with Sub Mil Lines Mounted on Glass

The basic chemistry of photography is about 125 years old. Over time the technology has been refined over and over again. With increasing capabilities the diversity of the products expanded. A film used to capture X-rays to generate a medical image is not comparable with a film used as original to generate a newspaper page.

The chemical milling industry has it own needs and expectations and the phototool suppliers addressed these needs and expectations with a customer designed film. Over the 125 years film suppliers learned how to customize the characteristics of their products. But there is no such thing as a free lunch. What can be won in one aspect is to be pruned on elsewhere. A film is a compromise. In a modern chemical milling industry phototool the image integrity, the scratch resistance and the dimensional stability are pushed to the very end.

Eric Janssens, Business Manager PCB, Agfa-Gevaert N.V., Mortsel Belgium