Methods and systems to compensate for a stitching disturbance of a printed pattern in a maskless lithography system utilizing overlap without an explicit attenuation

An apparatus configured for printing a pattern on a photosensitive surface using a maskless lithography system including a spatial light modulator (SLM), the apparatus comprising:

• means for defining two or more exposure areas within a predetermined region of the surface, each area corresponding to selected pixels of the SLM;
• means for forming an overlapping region between the two or more exposure areas, the overlapping region being defined by respective overlapping edges of the exposure areas, each overlapping edge corresponding to at least one overlapping pair of the selected pixels from each area;
• and
• means for alternately activating the pixels within the pair such that only one of the pixels within the pair produces the pattern during one exposure and only the other pixel within the pair produces the pattern during an ensuing exposure, the pattern being representative of an oscillating stitching line.

A computer readable medium carrying one or more sequences of one or more instructions for execution by one or more processors to perform a method for printing a pattern on a photosensitive surface using a maskless lithography system including a spatial light modulator (SLM), the instructions when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform the steps of:

• defining two or more exposure areas within a predetermined region of the surface, each area corresponding to selected pixels of the SLM;
• forming an overlapping region between the two or more exposure areas, the overlapping region being defined by respective overlapping edges of the exposure areas, each overlapping edge corresponding to at least one overlapping pair of the selected pixels from each area;
• and
• alternately activating the pixels within the pair such that only one of the pixels within the pair produces the pattern during one exposure and only the other pixel within the pair produces the pattern during an ensuing exposure, the pattern being representative of an oscillating stitching line.