AVS 49th International Symposium
    Plasma Science Monday Sessions
       Session PS2-MoA

Invited Paper PS2-MoA5
Plasma Processing for Large Area Substrates

Monday, November 4, 2002, 3:20 pm, Room C-105

Session: Plasma Processing for Large Area Substrates
Presenter: V. Cassagne, UNAXIS France
Authors: V. Cassagne, UNAXIS France
M. Elyaakoubi, UNAXIS France
Correspondent: Click to Email
In the liquid crystal flat panel display industry, the large area has another meaning than in semiconductor business. First, in size , the starting generation in the early 90's was in the range of 300x400mm glass substrate, now (5@superth@ generation) the average size is 1100x1250 mm (higher productivity, higher flexibility). Second is the generation cycles : in 12 years, the market generated 6 size generations without real sizes standards. Now with more than 1.4m@super2@ substrates, in parallel of economic and production pressure, we have to face Physics challenges in addition to standard engineering issues. Both for PECVD, PVD and dry etching processes, we have to deal with new phenomenon linked to the dimensions. There are first mechanical (loading 0.5mm thick substrate, thermal expansion, atmospheric pressure stress), then thermal (temperature process uniformity, heating/cooling power and time), gas flow (as diffusion length is smaller than reactor size local defaults are exhibited), RF electric field uniformity (now electrode dimensions start to be not negligible compare to RF wavelength, local field disturbances affect the process uniformity due to diffusion limitation). In addition, production trends require higher throughput (higher deposition rate, faster plasma cleaning ), higher yield (low particles, lower defaults), higher up-time (higher reliability, easier maintenance), smaller footprint (compact solution, parallelism). It leads to R&D programs like plasma uniformity (gas flow, RF field, plasma chemistry), arcing-free plasma, up-scalable concepts and target utilization optimization for PVD and PECVD and high density source for Dry Etching. All these topics are evaluated by numerical modeling and experimental set-up. Advanced materials, laboratory tests and prototyping are used in order to prepare new plasma system generations.