Advanced PVD Technology and Manufacturing Solutions for Touch Screen Panels

摘要

In recent years the growth of the display industry has been significantly enhanced by the explosive proliferation of touch screen based mobile devices to the consumer electronics market. The success of these, now almost ubiquitous, Touch Screen Panels (TSP's), has in part been enabled by the availability of proven manufacturing solutions such as the ARISTO? and SmartWeb? platforms from Applied Materials, both of which have been designed to meet the strict optical and electrical requirements provided by the touch panel manufacturing industry. Today's touch screen manufacturers have worked tirelessly to enhance their product portfolios with larger, lighter and more reliable TSPs demonstrating improved electrical and optical performance originating from improvements in transmittance, patterning invisibility, sunlight readability and color fastness. Applied Materials offers continuously improved manufacturing platforms to meet this demand for each of the principal TSP technologies (including capacitive, resistive and surface acoustic wave) as well as the capability of supporting even the most complex of integration schemes (inclusive out-cell, on-cell and in-cell). A wide variety of different deposition processes are utilized during the manufacture of both glass and film based touch panel devices. These include the deposition of diffusion barrier films, passivation films, metal contacts, optical index matching films and transparent conductive oxides (TCO's). Complex layer stacks are also required to enhance the optical performance of the device (especially on non-glass based substrates) to meet the ever evolving requirements for fully integrated, invisible and reliable next generation TSP's. In particular, this has driven the development of very low resistivity TCO's deposited under low thermal budget conditions for low glass transition temperature film based devices.