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CN-122013103-A - Glass substrate metal mask for OLED production

CN122013103ACN 122013103 ACN122013103 ACN 122013103ACN-122013103-A

Abstract

The present invention relates to a glass substrate supported metal mask for organic light emitting diode display fabrication. The mask includes a glass substrate located only outside the display area for providing structural stability and an open-pore metal layer forming apertures for material deposition in the display area. The open-cell metal layer may be formed by electroforming, sputtering, chemical vapor deposition, evaporation, or atomic layer deposition, using a metal comprising a material having a low coefficient of thermal expansion, such as invar, super invar, kovar, 42 alloy, nickel, tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum, or rhenium. The invention supports two structural forms, namely a fine metal mask and an open metal mask which are respectively used for vapor deposition of red, green and blue sub-pixels and a common layer. The invention can be used for batch processing of a plurality of miniature organic light-emitting diode display substrates, and can also be used for full coverage processing of a single active matrix organic light-emitting diode display substrate.

Inventors

  • LI SHIYUN

Assignees

  • 深圳迈可视维科技有限公司

Dates

Publication Date
20260512
Application Date
20250905
Priority Date
20240912

Claims (12)

  1. 1. A glass substrate supported metal mask for OLED display fabrication, comprising: a glass substrate, which is only located outside the display area and is used for providing structural stability; An open pore metal layer forms apertures for material deposition in the display area.
  2. 2. The metal mask supported by the glass substrate according to claim 1, Wherein the glass substrate is selected from borosilicate glass, fused quartz or display grade glass for TFT-LCD or AMOLED manufacture, The thickness of which is 0.5mm to 3.0mm.
  3. 3. The metal mask supported by the glass substrate according to claim 1, Wherein the open-cell metal layer is selected from metals having a low coefficient of thermal expansion, including invar, super invar, kovar, 42 alloy, nickel, tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum, or rhenium.
  4. 4. The metal mask supported by the glass substrate according to claim 1, The open-pore metal layer is formed through electroforming, sputtering, chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), evaporation or Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), and the specific deposition mode is selected according to mask structures or production equipment conditions.
  5. 5. The glass substrate supported metal mask of claim 1, Wherein the glass substrate has an arrangement corresponding to the plurality microOLED of display substrates for batch processing of the plurality microOLED of display substrates.
  6. 6. The glass substrate supported metal mask of claim 1, Wherein the glass substrate is sized to completely cover a sheet of AMOLED display substrate for material deposition over the entire display area through a single integrated mask.
  7. 7. A method of manufacturing a metal mask for glass substrate support, comprising: Providing a glass substrate as a structural support; Depositing a metal electrode layer on a glass substrate; patterning a photoresist on the metal electrode layer to define openings for deposition of OLED material; forming an open pore metal layer through an electroforming process; and removing the glass substrate and the metal electrode layer in the display area through a back etching process, so that only the open-pore metal layer remains in the display area.
  8. 8. A method of manufacturing a metal mask for glass substrate support, comprising: Providing a glass substrate as a structural support; Forming an open-pore metal layer on a glass substrate; patterning the open-cell metal layer in the display area to form openings for deposition of OLED material; And removing the glass substrate in the display area through a back etching process, so that only the open-pore metal layer remains in the display area.
  9. 9. The method for manufacturing a metal mask for glass substrate support according to claim 7 or 8, Characterized in that the glass substrate is selected from borosilicate glass, fused quartz or display grade glass for TFT-LCD or AMOLED manufacture, The thickness of which is 0.5mm to 3.0 mm. The method for manufacturing a metal mask for glass substrate support according to claim 7 or 8, Wherein the open-cell metal layer is composed of a metal having a low coefficient of thermal expansion, the metal comprising invar, super invar, kovar, 42 alloy, nickel, tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum, or rhenium.
  10. 10. The method for manufacturing a metal mask for glass substrate support according to claim 7 or 8, The method is characterized in that the open-pore metal layer is formed by electroforming, sputtering, chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), evaporation or Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), and a deposition method is selected according to mask structures or production equipment conditions.
  11. 11. The method for manufacturing a metal mask for glass substrate support according to claim 7 or 8, Wherein the glass substrate has an arrangement corresponding to the plurality microOLED of display substrates for batch processing of the plurality microOLED of display substrates.
  12. 12. The method for manufacturing a metal mask for glass substrate support according to claim 7 or 8, Wherein the glass substrate is sized to completely cover a sheet of AMOLED display substrate for material deposition over the entire display area through a single integrated mask.

Description

Glass substrate metal mask for OLED production Technical Field The invention relates to the technical field of manufacturing of organic light-emitting diode displays, in particular to a glass substrate metal mask structure for manufacturing the organic light-emitting diode displays, which comprises a high-precision pattern evaporation mask scheme suitable for an active matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED), a micro organic light-emitting diode display (microOLED) and the like, and covers mask technologies such as a fine metal mask (FINE METAL MASK, FMM), an Open metal mask (Open METAL MASK, OMM) and the like. Background The split FMM is widely applied to medium and small-sized AMOLED displays such as smart phones and tablet computers for a long time, and is used for the accurate evaporation of red, green and blue organic materials so as to realize pixel alignment and color accuracy. However, as the display size increases, the use of a division type mask becomes more difficult. In order to adapt to a large-size substrate, a plurality of small mask segments are usually spliced and aligned with high precision in the manufacturing process, and misalignment between segments is easy to occur in the process, so that defects such as pixel crosstalk, uneven evaporation and the like are caused, thereby influencing the yield and improving the production cost. The invar material used for the split mask has a low thermal expansion coefficient, but the thin and fragile structure makes the invar material easily damaged by stress in the alignment and stretching processes. In particular, in the production of large-size, high-resolution displays (such as monitors and televisions), the problem of mechanical stress of such masks is an important bottleneck limiting their use on a large scale. The multi-stage splicing and welding operation increases the risk of failure, and slight misalignment may also lead to degradation of image quality, further affecting manufacturing efficiency. Therefore, in the manufacture of large-sized displays (such as televisions and monitors), the mechanical structure of the conventional FMM is difficult to satisfy. At present, a white light OLED alternative scheme is commonly adopted in the industry, and a color filter is used for replacing direct red, green and blue pattern evaporation, so that the method solves the problem of a mask, but the current efficiency and the color purity are sacrificed. The popularization of the white light scheme is just a expedient for passive adoption because invar materials cannot adapt to large-size requirements. Although the low coefficient of thermal expansion of invar materials helps to improve vapor deposition accuracy, its insufficient mechanical strength limits its application in the production of large-size displays. Several attempts have shown that expanding it for large-size masks not only presents process difficulties, but also is very prone to deformation during use due to insufficient material rigidity, severely affecting product yield. Therefore, there is a strong need for a mask structure with both scalability and mechanical stability to replace the existing Yan Gangxing FMM scheme. On the other hand, microOLED displays place higher demands on the accuracy of the mask, which resolution is typically in excess of two thousand pixels per inch, and conventional FMM techniques have failed to meet such high accuracy pattern formation. In recent years, attempts have been made to use Silicon-Substrate-fine-feature-Supported Fine Silicon NITRIDE MASK, SS-FSM (Silicon-nitride-FSM) to improve pattern accuracy, but such materials are fragile and have short life in high turnover manufacturing environments, and have not been proven to be useful for mass production. In summary, there are significant limitations to the current masking techniques used for AMOLED and microOLED fabrication. The difficulty of the split invar mask in expanding the production of large-size displays indirectly leads to the compromises of white light schemes, while SS-FSM has potential in terms of accuracy, but still cannot meet the requirements of high reliability and mass production. Therefore, there is a great need in the OLED industry for a new mask structure that is scalable, durable and highly accurate to meet both different size and high resolution requirements. Disclosure of Invention The invention provides a Glass Substrate-based fine metal mask (Glass-Substrate-Supported FINE METAL MASK, GS-FMM) and Open metal mask (Glass-Substrate-Supported Open METAL MASK, GS-OMM) structure, which remarkably improves the existing FMM and SS-FSM technologies. The scheme aims to solve the core problems of expandability, precision, durability, manufacturing efficiency and the like in the manufacturing of AMOLED and microOLED. In the production of AMOLED displays, GS-FMM technology provides a solution to the problems of yield and scalability of conventional split FMMs. The conventional FMM is mo