This technology is a fabrication approach for thin-film transistor (TFT) devices that yields seamless transitions between pixels.
During the TFT manufacturing process, adjacent areas of the substrate may be consecutively irradiated by different laser pulses having different energies, potentially creating an undesirable sharp spatial transition in crystal structure and performance. When adjacent regions are crystallized by pulses of slightly different energies, differences in energy density between the two regions may cause unwanted edge effects. For instance, if these regions each comprise a single pixel in an LCD, a noticeable transition may exist between pixels.
This technology is a masking approach that introduces spacing between pixels to leverage the asymmetric laser energies and yield smoother pixel edges. By introducing the small spacing between pixels, this technique forces edge crystals to be partially energized by each laser pulse, creating a less noticeable edge at the pixel-pixel interface. As such, this technology enables the manufacturing of high-quality TFT devices.
This technology has been validated in a laboratory environment.
IR M02-061
Licensing Contact: Greg Maskel