At a glance
| Booth | T9404 |
| Country | US |
| Website | www.nabulitho.com |
Company profile
Nabu Optical Systems is a Dayton, Ohio-based semiconductor technology company developing advanced maskless lithography tools that remove the physical photomask from the critical path. Its flagship ANU-1 patterns wafers and substrates directly from a design file, eliminating the need for reticles, mask-shop lead times and minimum order quantities. The ANU-1 is positioned for research and development through low-volume production, including photonics, compound-semiconductor lines, advanced packaging and teams whose designs change faster than a mask set can be ordered. Nabu Optical Systems emerged from photonics research at the University of Dayton and combines optical engineering, precision motion control and a purpose-built exposure architecture in a compact platform sized for a standard cleanroom bay. The ANU-1 is designed to bridge benchtop prototyping and low-volume production so process engineers can iterate in hours instead of weeks without waiting for a newly ordered physical mask set. Nabu combines projection lithography for speed with direct laser writing for flexibility, using virtual masks to avoid the need for costly physical masks. The company targets small and medium enterprises, innovative startups and research institutions that can be underserved by lithography markets oriented toward very large-scale demand. Nabu describes its technology as addressing a market gap for organizations whose scale and development cycles do not match the very large-volume requirements commonly favored by traditional lithography offerings. Its tools are intended for semiconductor manufacturing, research and emerging chip ventures, particularly in the 180 nm to 500 nm node segment, and the company states that pricing is intended to be accessible for R&D, university and government laboratories. Nabu states that its platform is significantly smaller and a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, with the aim of reducing manufacturing-process time by months and costs by millions. Nabu Optical Systems received the Startup Contest award at the 68th International Conference on Electron, Ion, and Photon Beam Technology and Nanofabrication, EIPBN 2025.
Exhibits
The ANU-1 is Nabu Optical Systems' flagship high-speed direct-write optical lithography tool, based on the company's thermal projection lithography platform and positioned for prototyping through low-volume production. For ANU-1, Nabu lists 180 nm resolution and a projected throughput of 10 Wafer/Hour on 4-inch wafers. Mithra is an all-in-one measurement tool with a motorized objective-lens swap system, high-resolution cameras and a bend-and-warp measurement attachment for automated high-speed sample mapping. Mithra software provides data including defect percentage, line uniformity and stitching errors, together with high-resolution images down to 250 nm. ENKI is a high-power laser platform that combines a pulse-width-tunable 1064 nm laser with pulse widths of 5-1000 ns, a booster and an amplifier. ENKI output pulse energy can exceed 10 mJ, and a single solution can contain any combination of up to four elements, such as multiple lasers, a booster and an amplifier. A 532 nm frequency-doubled attachment can be added to ENKI's output to provide more than 1 mJ of green light.
Capabilities and products
- maskless direct-write optical lithography tools
- automated optical sample mapping and warpage measurement