Presentation Transcript

1. Evaporation Printing of Patterned Thin FilmsMay, 2013

2. Outline Introduction Company Overview and Key Staff Evaporation Printing of Patterned Thin Films Technology Show mask management Alignment registration Market Applications Active Matrix Display Backplanes ESL OLED Printed Electronics Fine Lines Embedded Components Facility Description Technology and Product Roadmap

3. Overview

4. Introduction Fabricate patterned thin films with feature size down to five micron with alignment accuracy better than one micron. Simple approach to printed electronics thin film fabrication using additive manufacturing called evaporation printing Utilizes vapor deposition of evaporable metals, oxides and semiconductor materials through a shadow mask Nearly any substrate Roll-to-roll capable Simple, fast, low cost, efficient and green technology Usage of multiple shadow masks combined with precision alignment enables multi-layer fabrication of arrays including embedded TFTs, capacitors and resistors Active matrix backplanes for OLED and ePaper displays have been fabricatedanddemonstrated Fine line and passive and active component fabrication development ability underway
5. Company Overview Founded by Dr. Peter Brody active matrix display backplane pioneer Winner of numerous awards including Draper Prize in 2012 Developed alternative to photolithography-based microcircuit manufacturing Display backplanes matrices – OLED and ePaper Fine lines for chip packaging Passive and active components Funded by private equity and successful entrepreneur family Technology has been proven Scaling up low volume in-line beta tool Developing production process Business model Sell products to prove process and tool Sell process equipment; License Technologies
6. MANAGEMENT & Key staffAdvantech Talent base is considerable Sr. Management: CEO Whit Little, MBA, Edinburgh (Scotland). An experienced financial & operational officer in both technologystartups and manufacturing. VP Blake Brocato, with 30 years in thin film deposition with Seagate Technology and others. VP Scott Lauer, EE and MBA, University of Pittsburgh 17 years in control systems and automation, with Rockwell Automation and II-IV, Inc. A licensed professional engineer. Key Technical Staff: Tom Ambrose PhD, material physics (Johns Hopkins). Expert in thin film deposition methodologies. Brian Bucci, PhD mechanical engineering (Pitt) with precision equipment experience Prashin Sharma, mechanical eng’g MS degree (Carnegie-Mellon. Former researcher in micro-nano tooling.) Chuck Harrigal, EE (Penn State). Multiple industry experience in embedded hardware/software development. John Shelapinsky, ME (CMU), MBA (CMU). Prior electro- and optics-mechanical designer. Jeff Conrad , Over 30 years experience with vacuum deposition equipment. Tim Cowen, Over 30 years experience in shadow-mask vacuum deposition. CONTINUED
7. MANAGEMENT & Key staffAmax’s Talent base is considerable (Continued) Contracted Senior Staff: Poohsan Tamura, optical sensing PhD (Arizona). expert in optical sensing, metrology and inspection. Vladimir Brajovic, PhD in Robotics, Carnegie Mellon. Broad research & applications expertise in computational imaging, algorithms and architecture. NebojsaJanković, PhD Professor University of Nis, Serbia Faculty of Electronic Engineering (EF) Department of Microelectronics Bud Smith, mechanical engineer with MBA from MIT. Prior Booz-Allen consultant & senior executive/CEO in process control, microprocessing and tool manufacturing. University of Pittsburgh business faculty. Joshua Ziff, nuclear eng’g (Purdue) &MBA (Carnegie-Mellon). Ex-CEO of Bridge Semiconductor. Jean Nagy, Accounting (Penn State) and CPA. Prior Arthur Andersen auditor, and financial/operations director at GlaxoSmithKline.

8. Technology Overview

9. Advantech US Technology Evaporation Printing Additive process Vacuum Deposition (thermal and/or e-beam) Fine Metal Foil Shadow Masks High and Low temperature materials + + = Deposition Sub 1 mil aperture Masks 1mm Alignment Multiple Steps
10. Materials The range of materials is extensive, including pure metals, precious metals, standard alloys, oxides, nitrides, and fluorides. “Anything Evaporable” * non-exhaustive list. Contact us about your specific material
11. Proprietary Shadow Mask Management Fine metal foil (electro-formed) with distinct aperture features (cut outs) Nearly any shape imaginable: squares, circles, etc. Current Mask Design specs: All feature sizes less than 1 mil (25 microns) Shadow mask thickness: 10 - 20 mm Feature trace size: <10 mm Feature spacing : ~20 mm Mask fixed to rigid frame (held taut) Mask cleaning: wet etch process Mask lifetimes (> 2 years)
12. Proprietary Precision Alignment Test Procedure: Align, Deposit, Remove sample and document alignment 10 times Goal: Prove repeatable alignment 1st Deposition 10th Deposition Results: Independent alignments repeatable to within 1 micron
13. Small metal line features Minimum feature size : <10 mm Minimum feature spacing: ~20 mm 30 mm 15 mm Any type of substrate (rigid glass or flexible plastic)
14. Evaporation Precision
15. Concept Flexible Multi-Chamber In-Line Manufacturing Masks and deposited materials can be configured for specific end-user requirements Masks Masks Masks Exit Loadlock Entrance Loadlock Etch Clean Semiconductor Metals Oxides Modular Loadlocks to eliminate particles Reduce material cross contamination Improve substrate cleanliness Quick change product by changing masks Low volume production runs Add chambers = increase throughput Can make many configurations of passive and active components
16. Amax miniLine™

17. Build Examples

18. E-Paper Shadow Mask Steps 6total process build steps PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
19. miniLineTM ESL Backplane Build Optical Micrograph 50 mm Pixel Layout Source/Drain Leads semiconductor pre-patterned substrate Crossover Straps Gate /Top Cap metal Cap/Cross Over Oxide Gate Oxide
20. TFT Build Shadow Mask Steps 7 total process build steps PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
21. AM-OLED TFT Circuit Build Example 2 transistor - 1 capacitor (2T/1C) active matrix array Array specs: 960 x 240 pixels - 115 mm diagonal Feature size is ~ 15 um with a better than 1 um alignment V Data D G T1 V Trigger Metal Gate S C Drain Source Drain Gate Oxide V DD Semiconductor D T2 Oxide G S Glass substrate Output Pad Field Effect Transistor Cross Section TFT Circuit PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
22. 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 Pre-Patterned Substrate VData 1 VDD VTrigger 2 PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
23. 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 1 Oxide Deposition 1 2 PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
24. 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 Oxide and Semiconductor 2 1 2 PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
25. 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 3 Al and Ni contacts 1 2 PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
26. 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 Gate Oxide 4 1 2 PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
27. 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 Ni and Al strap 5 1 2 PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
28. 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 Cap Oxide 6 1 2 PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
29. 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 Top Gate 7 1 2 PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
30. 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 Sub Pixel VData Output Pad BLUE RED GREEN T2 1 VDD Cap VTrigger T1 83.3 um 2 250 um PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
31. Chip Carrier Shadow Mask Steps 3total process build steps PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
32. Carrier with Die Start Finish
33. Mask 1 Mask 1
34. Layer 1 Mask 1
35. Mask 2 Mask 2
36. Layer 2 Mask 2
37. Mask 3 Mask 3
38. Layer 3: Build Complete Mask 3

39. Markets

40. Market Applications End-user target markets Active Matrix backplanes ePaper displays OLED displays Printed Electronics Electronic shelf labels (ESL) - segmented Fine lines Embedded active and passive components
41. Active Matrix backplanes Vdd Vdd Vgate C Vdata T1 T2 Vcom 2T/1C circuit Mask layout Final device Note: Device fabrication in a single vacuum chamber (6 different deposition steps)
42. Display Examples – AMOLED G B R 250 microns 83 microns
43. ePaper EXAMPLES: Active matrix ESL
44. Printed electronics Beyond Backplanes Fine Lines Embedded Components
45. Fine Lines – microlines™ New opportunity beyond display backplanes Exploit ability to manufacture small feature sizes on a variety of substrates Chip Carriers need finer lines Miniaturization – space, weight and power High speed transfer rates Reduce number of PCB layers
46. Sem of Microlines connected to vias standard 10 mil via pads with 100 micron and 70 micron traces and a 50 micron space.
47. Sem of Microlines connected to vias 4 mil pads with 2 mil vias connected with 1 mil lines
48. Microlines 8 mm
49. Microlines (cont’d) 5 micron lines
50. Active and Passive Components Discrete components fabricated on substrates: Resistors Capacitors Transistors Diodes Antennas
51. Technology Comparison for Active Matrix TFTs PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL
52. Active Components – TFT (ESL)
53. Step Coverage
54. Characteristic Impedance (Zo) Data Line Parameters: 5000 Å Copper, 300 micron pitch Substrate: 25 micron Kapton E Sample Size: 10 sample lines measured per width Test parameters: 1 MHz, Values in Ohms Test Measurements compare well with Wheeler Formulations for Microstrips
55. Thickness requirements
56. Passive Components - resistors Shown: test panel of resistors that are 1 mil wide connected to 1 mil lines. By changing the resistive material and thickness, virtually any resistance from fractional ohms to several megohms per resistor is possible 25 microns (1 mil)
57. PreliminARY resistor Data (0.5 mil wide)
58. Passive Components - Capacitors Parallel Plate Capacitors made with the process. Devices were 100 square micron area with and a dielectric layer of 3000 Å of Al2O3 with pad layers of 1000Å Al. Random sample of 100 capacitors on panels containing over 14,000 capacitors.
59. “ballpark” pricing estimates Mask NRE: $1,500 to $35,000 per layer Dependent upon: Feature size, design complexity, Overall dimensions Set-up/prep: $500 Approx. $100/layer (affected by depo. time) Does not include substrate nor materials Testing Requirements –as required

60. Advantech US FacilityPittsburgh PA

61. New Facility
62. Deposition Equipment
63. Process Equipment
64. Testing Equipment
65. Auxiliary Equipment

66. Roadmap

67. Company Roadmap Phase I – Proof of Concept - Completed Demonstrated 60x80 mm (100 dpi) color OLED displays and 25x35 mm (70 dpi) dot matrix ePaper displays using active matrix backplanes fabricated using evaporation printing in R&D Fab Phase II – Characterize In-line Manufacturability – Underway Active matrix backplanes now being fabricated Scale-up process Validate performance, throughput, yield and cost assumptions Identify modifications needed for production level equipment Phase III – Manufacturing - Future Design and build manufacturing tool for production
68. Long term Vision Flexible substrates Large area substrates Higher resolution Roll to roll manufacturing