Next generation coating technologies for low-cost electronics manufacturing

Extrusion coating and extrude-and-spin coating have been developed to significantly reduce the costs associated with the application of polymer films such as photoresists, dielectrics and color filter materials. These technologies are shown to reduce process fluid utilization by 75-95% as compared to conventional spin coating. Extrusion coating is readily scaled to accommodate increasingly larger square or rectangular substrates with high throughput. A wide variety of extrusion-coated films ranging from 300 /spl Aring/ to greater than 150 /spl mu/m thick have been demonstrated on substrates up to 600 mm in size. Typical film thickness uniformity is +/-3%. The extrusion coater system was shown to produce pinhole-free coatings with particle counts meeting or exceeding industry standards. Extrude-and-spin coating has been successfully demonstrated on 370/spl times/470 mm rectangular display glass substrates with film thickness uniformities of less than +/-3%. This technology is also being developed for processing round substrates, such as silicon wafers.