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Art and Engineering:
Batik and Photolithography
Art and Engineering:
Batik and Photolithography
1 April 2025
If you haven’t yet noticed, I love to travel abroad. While rest and recreation are part of the objective, my curiosity inevitably leads me to find something to learn and bring back home (in addition to the art and souvenirs I acquire). Recently departing Kuala Lumpur, I was struck by the ubiquitous presence of a unique class of fabric. Seeking deeper understanding, a visit to the National Textile Museum revealed the ancient art of Batik. Astonishingly, this pre-colonial technique shares core resist-based patterning principles with current-day technologies. This revelation underscores a common thread between traditional artistry and cutting-edge technology, a fascinating intersection I'm eager to share. Despite their vastly different contexts, the ancient art of Batik and modern manufacturing processing share fundamental principles of resist-based patterning, demonstrating how processes can be similar when sharing common outputs.
Figure 1: Examples of Batik art forms from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Patterning with wax and dyes creates discrete colored zones to produce intricate patterns on fabrics. Batik designs draw from the surrounding nature for inspiration as seen in the florals seen here.
Batik: Artistic Patterning
Batik: Artistic Patterning
Batik is known as an art form (and a material in the context of process engineering) with global origins from the ancient world. Historical artifacts show evidence of its presence in both Africa and Asia, with the technique highly developed in Southeast Asia, particularly on the island of Java in present-day Indonesia. Batik became more widely known during the Age of Exploration through international trade.
Characterized by beautiful, intricate patterns and colors, captivating those who encounter it, Batik is a specific type of textile art. Batik employs a special process of using wax as a resist on fabric for selective and controlled patterning and colorization. The basic steps begin with mounting the fabric on a frame. Heated liquid wax is then dispensed onto a drawn trace on the workpiece using a tool called a tjanting. This traditional tool, a copper reservoir with a small tip similar to a miniature funnel attached to a wooden handle, is manipulated by hand to create patterns. Dyes are then applied to the un-waxed regions to add color. While modern Batik processes may use machines for large-scale production, the fundamental steps remain the same.
Batik is central to the cultural heritage and identity of the Malaysian people. Traditionally used to create formal attire for official ceremonies, weddings, and special events, Batik has expanded to other uses, including patterns for home decorations, scarves, and bags. Preserving traditions is important to Malaysia, and Batik has gained traction with younger and current Malaysian generations. With Batik increasingly incorporated into Western-style clothing, the art form is seeing a resurgence in mainstream fashion as a global trend, promoting and preserving a tradition among younger Malaysian generations for years to come.
Figure 2: An artisan applying wax with a tjanting on fabric stretched over a mount. Wax is applied atop a pre-drawn design on the fabric. Different tjantings of different sizes can be used to dispense different widths of wax lines, dots, and curves. Photo credit: macarius draftStudio.
Photolithography: Engineered Patterning
Photolithography: Engineered Patterning
While Batik has been an art form (and therefore a process) for thousands of years, the foundational principles of using resist materials have current technological relevance in our globalized and industrialized society. Similar to Batik, where intricate patterns are used to create admirable art pieces, creating intricate flat patterns is also fundamental to modern-day technology and manufacturing.
Photolithography is one standard processing method used to produce intricate patterns. Similar to Batik, a polymeric material called photoresist is key. After being applied to a substrate, the photoresist is selectively exposed to UV light using a mask. The portions of the photoresist covered by the mask would have different properties than those not covered. Following the development of the photoresist, an image of the mask or its negative would transferred onto the substrate. This results in a defined pattern of exposed substrate, available for further processing. Creating such patterns with control and precision lends itself to a variety of applications, with integrated circuits being a prime example.
Figure 3: Schematic of photoresist development process. Exposure of light through a mask onto a photoresist changes material properties such that a pattern is left behind following development available for subsequent processing.
Integrated circuits are the basic building blocks of the computer chips that run our modern world. In their fabrication, photolithography is employed on silicon substrates to produce intricate patterns of conductive, semiconductive, and resistive materials in thin films, one layer at a time. Such patterns produced by photolithography on silicon allow for selective etching (i.e., removal), deposition (i.e., addition), or doping (i.e., compositional modification) of underlying substrates to create transistor stacks. When done in a strategic sequence, stacks of these thin-film transistors are interconnected to produce functional circuits. The variations of these circuits and their configurations allow for the production of different kinds of computer chips, which, when used together, govern our modern computer systems.
Similar Processes for Similar Outcomes
Similar Processes for Similar Outcomes
Despite being separated by centuries, parallels between ancient Batik art forms and modern manufacturing methods like photolithography can be seen, as both aim to achieve similar results. With both targeting the creation of intricate patterns on flat surfaces—one for aesthetics and the other for functional circuits—both employ the basic technique of using resist materials for selective processing. Batik’s use of wax materials for targeted coloration is analogous to the use of UV-curable polymers in photolithography for targeted processing on silicon. This shared concept of selectively blocking alterations to a base material is the cornerstone of their operational similarities.
Beyond these foundational processing steps, other similar characteristics exist between these processes. Control of the placement of wax in Batik and photoresist in photolithography is paramount, with one requiring skilled artisans to do so by hand and the other necessitating precise equipment for the production of effective masks. The value of process iteration is also observed in both techniques, with more intricate patterns being achievable with repeated serial use of the same technique, whether for more color-rich complex designs or more sophisticated integrated circuitry. While the means of achieving precision differ dramatically, from the artisan's hand to advanced modern machinery, both Batik and photolithography rely on the iterative, controlled application of resist materials to create intricate and/or highly functional patterns.
Final Thoughts
Final Thoughts
Where objectives are similar, it follows that the processes to produce these results would be similar to some degree. So is the case where resist materials are leveraged to create complex patterns on flat surfaces. I never thought that techniques used in ancient times find applications with strong relevance today. When I first encountered Batik for the first time, it was hard not to notice the similarities between this ancient tradition and modern manufacturing processes like photolithography. If there is one point to take away, leave with the understanding of the enduring relationships between traditional processes of the past and the modern manufacturing processes of today and how inherently interconnected they can be, especially when they share similar outcomes.
Thx, m
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