Investigation of the Efficiency of High-Throughput Annealing Processes: Analysis of In-Line Flash Lamp Treatment As an Option for New Processing Lines
(Room Room 104-C)
02 May 19
4:20 PM
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4:40 PM
Tracks:
Emerging Technologies
Novel applications of thin-film deposition techniques cause a strong demand for new low temperature deposition technologies of semiconductor, metallic or TCO (Transparent Conductive Oxide) layers on various substrates. Beside conventional glass substrates, more and more products require flexible substrates like polymer web, flexible glass, textile or paper.
However, the optical and electrical properties of layers deposited on that substrates at low temperatures need to be improved by subsequent annealing. Such annealing steps are typically limited by the substrate properties, e.g. temperatures <200°C for flexible substrates or <500°C for glass. This does either imply relative long annealing times – which is in contradiction to the intended high speed in-line or roll-to-roll processing. This is the driving force to establish new annealing technologies in order to integrate them into next generation high-throughput fabrication equipment.
In-line Flash lamp annealing (FLA) on a (sub)millisecond scale allows the annealing of near surface layers at high temperatures (>500°C) without damaging deeper layers or the bulk material. Beside the unique surface annealing feature this process does also show drastic reductions in energy consumption and can save other resources. The presentation will give an overview about these effects and an outlook on future challenges of this method.