Tobias Stolley

Roll-to-roll manufacturing of electronic devices

Roll-to-Roll (R2R) production of thin film based electronic devices (e.g. solar cells, activematrix TFT backplanes & touch screens) combine the advantages of the use of inexpensive, lightweight & flexible substrates with high throughput production. Significant cost reduction opportunities can also be found in terms of processing tool capital cost, utilized substrate area and process gas flow when compared with batch processing systems. Nevertheless, material handling, device patterning and yield issues have limited widespread utilization of R2R manufacturing within the electronics industry.

Layer-thickness simulation for static thin-film deposition on Gen 6/Gen 7 substrates

— The movement of particles from a target to a substrate during the sputter process was studied using the Monte Carlo Simulation technique. The momentum and energy distribution of the ejected particles were taken into account along with the change of momentum and energy in their collisions with gas atoms. The momentum transfer from the ejected target atom to the gas atom was used to estimate the gas rarefaction in front of the target. Layer-thickness distributions of different target materials were calculated and compared with experimental measurements. The results were used to optimize the uniformity of static thin-film depositions on Gen 6/Gen 7 substrates from a large-area cathode array.

6.2: Layer-Thickness Simulation for Static Thin-Film Deposition on Gen6/Gen7 Substrates

Monte Carlo simulations were performed to examine the layer thickness distribution of a sputter deposition process. The numerical results were used to optimize the uniformity of a large area cathode array for static thin film deposition on Gen6/Gen7 substrates. The influence of different target materials was investigated.