Detailed Description
In order to make the objects, technical solutions and advantages of the embodiments of the present application clearer, the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present application will be clearly and completely described below with reference to the drawings in the embodiments of the present application, and it is obvious that the described embodiments are some embodiments of the present application, but not all embodiments. The components of the embodiments of the present application, generally described and illustrated in the figures herein, can be arranged and designed in a wide variety of different configurations.
Thus, the following detailed description of the embodiments of the present application, presented in the accompanying drawings, is not intended to limit the scope of the claimed application, but is merely representative of selected embodiments of the application. All other embodiments, which can be derived by a person skilled in the art from the embodiments given herein without making any creative effort, shall fall within the protection scope of the present application.
It should be noted that: like reference numbers and letters refer to like items in the following figures, and thus, once an item is defined in one figure, it need not be further defined and explained in subsequent figures. Meanwhile, in the description of the present application, the terms "first", "second", and the like are used only for distinguishing the description, and are not to be construed as indicating or implying relative importance.
It is noted that, herein, relational terms such as first and second, and the like may be used solely to distinguish one entity or action from another entity or action without necessarily requiring or implying any actual such relationship or order between such entities or actions. Also, the terms "comprises," "comprising," or any other variation thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements does not include only those elements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus. Without further limitation, an element defined by the phrase "comprising an … …" does not exclude the presence of other identical elements in a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises the element.
In the description of the present application, it should be noted that the terms "upper", "lower", "inner", "outer", and the like indicate orientations or positional relationships based on orientations or positional relationships shown in the drawings or orientations or positional relationships conventionally found in use of products of the application, and are used only for convenience in describing the present application and for simplification of description, but do not indicate or imply that the referred devices or elements must have a specific orientation, be constructed in a specific orientation, and be operated, and thus should not be construed as limiting the present application.
In the description of the present application, it is also to be noted that, unless otherwise explicitly specified or limited, the terms "disposed" and "connected" are to be interpreted broadly, e.g., as being either fixedly connected, detachably connected, or integrally connected; can be mechanically or electrically connected; they may be connected directly or indirectly through intervening media, or they may be interconnected between two elements. The specific meaning of the above terms in the present application can be understood in a specific case by those of ordinary skill in the art.
Some embodiments of the present application will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. The embodiments described below and the features of the embodiments can be combined with each other without conflict.
In the prior art, most of electronic elements are prepared from organic materials which have good flexibility and can be prepared at low temperature in order to adapt to flexible electronic products, but the organic materials are easily affected by water and oxygen in the environment and have unstable performance. Meanwhile, due to the limitation of the flexible substrate, the temperature of the preparation process of most flexible electronic devices is below 300 ℃, so that the performance of the devices is limited, and the stability and the service life of the devices are far shorter than those of the devices prepared by the high-temperature process of the rigid substrate.
In view of this, in order to prepare an electronic component with excellent performance, good stability and long service life, referring to fig. 1, an embodiment of the present invention provides a method for manufacturing a Thin Film Transistor (TFT) array, where the method for manufacturing the TFT array includes:
s101, manufacturing a functional layer and a support structure of the patterned TFT device based on a substrate, wherein the functional layer comprises a sacrificial layer, and the support structure is connected with the substrate and the functional layer.
Due to the limitation of the flexible substrate, the preparation process of the flexible electronic device is limited below 300 ℃, and the performance of the prepared device is limited, so that the flexible electronic device is prepared in a transfer mode in the embodiment.
Specifically, in this embodiment, the substrate 110 includes a Si substrate 110, and since the Si substrate 110 is a rigid substrate 110, a functional layer 120 of a TFT device with excellent performance can be prepared on the substrate 110 by a relatively high temperature (300-. Of course, in other embodiments, other rigid substrates 110 may be used, and the embodiment is not limited in any way.
Further, referring to fig. 2, the functional layer 120 of the TFT device includes a sacrificial layer 121, a buffer layer 122, a semiconductor layer 123, a source electrode 124, a drain electrode 125, a dielectric layer 126, a gate electrode 127, and an encapsulation layer 128. S101 includes:
a patterned sacrificial layer 121 is sequentially formed on the substrate 110 side. The sacrificial layer 121 is a layer that can be removed in the transfer process, the connection between the functional layer 120 of the TFT device and the substrate 110 is realized through the sacrificial layer 121, and after the functional layer 120 of the TFT device is manufactured, the sacrificial layer 121 can be removed, so that the functional layer 120 of the TFT device and the substrate 110 are separated.
Further, the patterning described in this embodiment refers to preparing the sacrificial layer 121 on the substrate 110 in an array form, so that the functional layers 120 of the manufactured TFT device are also arranged in an array. The patterning process may be performed by etching or photolithography, that is, after the sacrificial layer 121 is grown on the substrate 110, the sacrificial layer 121 is etched or photolithographically etched to implement patterning of the sacrificial layer 121.
Moreover, the thickness of the sacrificial layer 121 is 10-200nm, and the material for preparing the sacrificial layer 121 can be silicon dioxide.
After the sacrificial layer 121 is fabricated, in order to have lattice mismatch between materials, the buffer layer 122 needs to be fabricated on the sacrificial layer 121 on the side away from the substrate 110, so as to achieve stress relief and dislocation filtering, so that the functional layer 120 of the fabricated TFT device obtains perfect crystal quality.
Like the sacrificial layer 121, after the buffer layer 122 is fabricated, the buffer layer 122 needs to be patterned, and the thickness of the buffer layer 122 provided in this embodiment is 50-300nm, and the material for fabricating the buffer layer 122 may be silicon carbide, gallium nitride, or the like.
After the buffer layer 122 is prepared, the semiconductor layer 123, the source electrode 124, the drain electrode 125, the dielectric layer 126, the gate electrode 127, the encapsulation layer 128 and the support structure are further prepared on the side of the buffer layer 122 away from the sacrificial layer 121, and the semiconductor layer 123, the source electrode 124, the drain electrode 125, the dielectric layer 126, the gate electrode 127 and the encapsulation layer 128 are patterned.
The semiconductor layer 123 may be IGZO (gallium zinc oxide) and the dielectric layer 126 may be ZrO2/HfO2(zirconium dioxide/hafnium dioxide), etc., gold electrodes for the gate, source and drain electrodes 125, and UV glue for the encapsulation layer 128. The thickness of the semiconductor layer 123 is 10 to 50nm, the thickness of the source electrode 124 and the drain electrode 125 is 30 to 80nm, and the thickness of the dielectric layer 126 is 50 to 200 nm.
It should be noted that the cross section of the supporting structure is T-shaped, and both ends of the supporting structure are respectively connected to the functional layer 120 of a TFT device, and meanwhile, the supporting structure is connected to the substrate 110, so that the process of removing the sacrificial layer 121 can be more convenient due to the support of the supporting structure. Also, the present embodiment employs a positive glue as the support structure, such as AZ 4620.
Meanwhile, the encapsulation layer 128 described in this embodiment forms a plane on the gate electrode 127, so that the transfer device and the functional layer 120 of each TFT device can be more conveniently bonded in the transfer process, the acting force of the transfer device on each TFT device functional layer 120 in the transfer process is the same, and the transfer can be better performed and the device is not easily damaged in the transfer process.
And S102, removing the sacrificial layer to support the functional layer of the patterned TFT device on the substrate through the support structure.
Referring to fig. 3, when the functional layer 120 of the patterned TFT device needs to be transferred to a target substrate, the sacrificial layer 121 needs to be removed first, so that the functional layer 120 of the TFT device is separated from the substrate 110. In this embodiment, the sacrificial layer 121 is removed by etching, and the sacrificial layer 121 may be selectively etched by BOE (Buffered Oxide Etch), so as to ensure that the device is not damaged. Meanwhile, the supporting structure can effectively support the device and simultaneously does not limit the transfer of the device, so that the success rate and the yield of the transfer of the device are effectively improved.
Further, during the fabrication of the support structure, patterning is performed using photoresist, so as to form a support structure in the regions of the source electrode 124 and the drain electrode 125, so as to facilitate the corrosion of the sacrificial layer 121 and the transfer of the device.
S103, transferring the functional layer of the patterned TFT device to a target substrate to form a TFT array.
The target substrate comprises a CPI substrate, a PI substrate and other flexible substrates, so that a high-temperature process and the flexible substrates can be compatible, and high-performance electronic elements can be prepared. Of course, substrates of other materials may be used as the target substrate. Therefore, the TFT device can be directionally assembled according to different assembly elements, and diversified development of electronic products is realized. Meanwhile, the flexible printed circuit board is not limited by size and a substrate, and has wide application prospect in the field of flexible electronic products.
Specifically, referring to fig. 4, S103 includes:
and S1031, bonding the packaging layer of each TFT device by using a transfer device.
In this embodiment, a huge transfer method such as PDMS glue or electrostatic adsorption may be used to achieve the effect of transferring the device to different application substrates 110. The transfer device is bonded with the surface of the packaging layer 128 of each TFT device, so that uniform force is exerted, and the TFT devices are not easy to damage in the transfer process.
And S1032, picking up the functional layer of the patterned TFT device by using the transfer device, and transferring the functional layer to a target substrate.
Wherein the support structure will be destroyed when the transfer means picks up the functional layer 120 of the patterned TFT device. In particular, the transfer of the TFT device to the target substrate is achieved by adjusting the pick-up speed and force to fracture the support structure, wherein most of the support structure will remain on the substrate 110 while leaving the support structure at the source electrode 124 and drain, and the remaining support structure can be removed after transferring the functional layer 120 of the patterned TFT device to the target substrate.
S1033, the functional layers of the patterned TFT device are bonded in contact with the target substrate and the transfer device is detached to form a TFT array on the target substrate.
And S104, opening the packaging layer of each TFT device to expose the electrode area.
Since the encapsulation layer 128 of each TFT device is disposed on the gate electrode 127, the source electrode 124, and the drain electrode 125 in order to uniformly apply a force during the transfer process, an opening and a photoresist stripping are also required in the motor area in order to expose the motor area.
Second embodiment
Referring to fig. 2, an embodiment of the present invention further provides a TFT device structure 100 to be transferred, where the TFT device structure 100 to be transferred includes a substrate 110, a functional layer 120 of a patterned TFT device, and a support structure, the functional layer 120 includes a sacrificial layer 121, and the functional layer 120 of the patterned TFT device is connected to the support structure substrate 110 through the sacrificial layer 121. And the functional layer 120 of each TFT device includes an encapsulation layer 128, the encapsulation layer 128 being disposed on a side of the functional layer 120 remote from the substrate 110.
In summary, embodiments of the present invention provide a TFT array manufacturing method and a TFT device structure to be transferred, in which a functional layer and a support structure of a patterned TFT device are manufactured on one side of a substrate, the functional layer includes a sacrificial layer, the support structure is connected to the substrate and the functional layer, the sacrificial layer is removed to support the functional layer of the patterned TFT device on the substrate through the support structure, and finally the functional layer of the patterned TFT device is transferred to a target substrate to form a TFT array. On one hand, after the functional layer of the patterned TFT device is manufactured on the substrate, the functional layer can be transferred to the target substrate, so that when the target substrate is a flexible substrate, the high-temperature process, the flexible substrate and the flexible substrate can be compatible, and a high-performance electronic element can be further prepared. On the other hand, the TFT array manufacturing method provided by the invention uses the supporting structure for supporting, so that the transfer of the device is not limited while the device can be effectively supported, and the success rate and the yield of the transfer of the device are effectively improved.
The above description is only a preferred embodiment of the present application and is not intended to limit the present application, and various modifications and changes may be made by those skilled in the art. Any modification, equivalent replacement, improvement and the like made within the spirit and principle of the present application shall be included in the protection scope of the present application.
It will be evident to those skilled in the art that the present application is not limited to the details of the foregoing illustrative embodiments, and that the present application may be embodied in other specific forms without departing from the spirit or essential attributes thereof. The present embodiments are therefore to be considered in all respects as illustrative and not restrictive, the scope of the application being indicated by the appended claims rather than by the foregoing description, and all changes which come within the meaning and range of equivalency of the claims are therefore intended to be embraced therein. Any reference sign in a claim should not be construed as limiting the claim concerned.