In her work titled "Modeling of thick photoresist for grayscale lithography application", Valeriia tackled the challenge of developing processes for the manufacturing of micro-optics with grayscale lithography. Usually, this procedure can be very time-consuming. Valeriia now succeeded in working out a special method for manufacturing microscopic optical components more precice and fast. The key here is the integration of so-called deep learning techniques into the manufacturing process. They allow the specific prediction of structural shapes, which then optimizes the accuracy of the final product. Valeriia Sedova's research realizes an important step towards faster and more cost-effective manufacturing of micro-optical components for a variety of application areas, e.g., telecommunications or medical imaging.

The thesis was supervised by Dr. Andreas Erdmann, group manager lithography and optics at Fraunhofer IISB and lecturer at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.

We are particularly pleased to have won Valeriia Sedova as a PhD student for Fraunhofer IISB!