Project Brief
General Competition (July 1995)Low-Cost Amorphous Silicon Manufacturing TechnologyDevelop an improved, low-cost, high-yield manufacturing process for fabricating large amorphous silicon devices for use in medical imaging systems and other applications. Sponsor: GE Research (formerly GE Corporate R&D)P.O. Box 8KW-C328 Schenectady, NY 12301-0008
General Electric Corporate Research and Development and EG&G Reticon (Sunnyvale, CA) jointly propose a project to develop dramatic improvements in the processing technology used to make thin-film amorphous silicon panels for imaging and display systems. Integrated circuits based on amorphous silicon thin films--as opposed to conventional single-crystal silicon ICs--are finding increasing use in devices that require large areas, because the amorphous films can be deposited over much larger areas than can be achieved with single crystals. The first applications were high-performance active matrix liquid crystal displays for military avionics. A second potentially important application is in large panel imagers for medical X-ray systems, where amorphous silicon image detectors could improve results while cutting costs for the single most important diagnostic tool in medicine. A key roadblock to this development is the cost of making the amorphous silicon devices. Prototypes of very high performance devices have been made, especially at GE, which has been studying the problem for several years, but manufacturing yields are too low for commercial production. The reason for the low yields is the complexity of the photolithography manufacturing process, which requires no fewer than 12 masking steps. GE and EG&G propose to develop technology to make the same devices in six steps, without any decline in the quality and performance of the finished device. The primary research challenge comes in combining manufacturing steps, which originally were kept separate in order to optimize for two different aspects of device performance without sacrificing either aspect. If successful the project could lead to a sixfold reduction in the cost of large amorphous silicon devices, with important applications in medical imaging, health care, industrial inspection systems, flat panel displays, and document processing. The target technology for the R&D program will be an improved X-ray imaging device that could take the place of both the photographic film and image intensifier technologies now in use.
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