Description:
This innovation facilitates rapid cooling in a vacuum (from 200 oC to 25 oC) and greatly diminishes the time required to produce complex thin films requiring multiple deposition steps.
At a Glance
- Reduces cooling time of a substrate in vacuum from hours to just a few minutes
- Decreases device fabrication time
- Increases throughput rate and overall manufacturing capacity
- Part of a large thin film device manufacturing portfolio
Detailed Description
Thin film deposition in vacuum requires careful control of substrate temperature, as this has a large effect on the thin film deposition process and the quality of the resulting films. This innovation is intended to be used as part of a multi-layer device fabrication process with multiple steps wherein the substrate temperature must be lowered from one step to the next.
This technology pertains to an apparatus and method for rapidly cooling a large substrate in a vacuum environment. While normal radiative cooling in a vacuum would require a number of hours to cool a substrate from 200 oC to 25 oC, this technology can perform this temperature reduction in 2-4 minutes. Such a dramatic reduction in time can reduce total device fabrication time, increase throughput rate and increase overall manufacturing capacity.
This innovation is part of a large portfolio of thin film technologies specifically developed for CdTe photovoltaic devices but potentially applicable to a wide variety of thin film technologies. Thin film coated substrates are ubiquitous in today's society and have been used for numerous aspects of consumer electronics (from integrated circuit fabrication to cell phone, computer and television display coatings), optics (e.g., coating glass), microparticle fabrication, photovoltaic fabrication, and packaging (e.g., aluminum coating on plastic for potato chip bags).
