Title
Advances in maskless and mask-based optical lithography on plastic flexible substrates
Author
TNO Industrie en Techniek
Barbu, I.
Ivan, M.G.
Giesen, P.T.M.
van de Moosdijk, M.
Meinders, E.R.
Publication year
2009
Abstract
Organic flexible electronics is an emerging technology with huge potential growth in the future which is likely to open up a complete new series of potential applications such as flexible OLED-based displays, urban commercial signage, and flexible electronic paper. The transistor is the fundamental building block of all these applications. A key challenge in patterning transistors on flexible plastic substrates stems from the in-plane nonlinear deformations as a consequence of foil expansion/shrinkage, moisture uptake, baking etc. during various processing steps. Optical maskless lithography is one of the potential candidates for compensating for these foil distortions by in-situ adjustment prior to exposure of the new layer image with respect to the already patterned layers. Maskless lithography also brings the added value of reducing the cost-of-ownership related to traditional mask-based tools by eliminating the need for expensive masks. For the purpose of this paper, single-layer maskless exposures at 355 nm were performed on gold-coated poly(ethylenenaphthalate) (PEN) flexible substrates temporarily attached to rigid carriers to ensure dimensional stability during processing. Two positive photoresists were employed for this study and the results on plastic foils were benchmarked against maskless as well as mask-based (ASML PAS 5500/100D stepper) exposures on silicon wafers.
Subject
Flexible substrate
Optical maskless lithography
Pixel grid imaging
Plastic electronics
Spatial light modulator
Cost of ownership
Emerging technologies
Flexible plastic substrates
Fundamental building blocks
Mask-less lithography
Moisture uptake
Nonlinear deformations
Optical lithography
Patterned layers
Plastic foils
Potential applications
Spatial light modulators
Dimensional stability
Economic analysis
Flexible displays
Gold coatings
Light modulation
Organic light emitting diodes (OLED)
Photolithography
Pulse circuits
Semiconducting silicon compounds
Silicon wafers
Substrates
Light modulators
Industrial Innovation
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TNO identifier
461616
ISBN
9780819479099
ISSN
0277-786X
Source
2009 Lithography Asia Conference, 18-19 November 2009, Taipei, China, 7520 (7520)
Series
Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
Document type
conference paper