Photolithography of thick photoresist coating for electrically controlled liquid crystal photonic bandgap fibre devices

Thick photoresist coating for electrode patterning in an anisotropically etched V-groove is investigated for electrically controlled liquid crystal photonic bandgap fibre devices. The photoresist step coverage at the convex corners is compared with and without soft baking after photoresist spin coating. Two-step UV exposure is applied to achieve a complete exposure for the thick photoresist layer at the bottom of the V-groove, and minimise the reduction in resolution and image distortion. The resolution reduction of the different open window width for electrode pattern transfer is also experimentally found.