title: Near-field diffraction in contact printing.
abstract: Recent efforts to analyze and define the sources of image degradation in the contact printing process have proved very informative. Near-field diffraction effects were found to play a significant role during contact printing. Therefore, linear analysis of the contact printing process is invalid. In fact, it was found that diffraction was compensating for the expected loss in edge sharpness due to the printing and film characteristics. Edge gradient analysis showed little modulation loss in the contact printing process even though a resolution loss was observed. Analysis showed that the loss in resolution is expected due to an effective increase in the granularity of the imagery.
authors.forename: R A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: G C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Trinks