Investigation into Development of Manufacture Process for Repetitive High Aspect Ratio Microstructures using Photosensitive Paste

Abstract

Repetitive high-aspect-ratio (HAR) microstructures of polymeric, ceramic, and metallic patterns are important for various applications such as electronic devices, biomedical engineering, sensors, optical communication, thin film optical elements, microfludic devices, fuelcells, and flat panel displays (FPD). HAR microstructures offer increased surface and cross sectional area, leading to increased sensitivity and further miniaturization, the possibility of higher assembly density of microstructure elements, higher throughput in continuous flow systems, and higher color resolution in displays compared with a system with low aspect ratio microstructures. A HAR is also important for studying the effect of three-dimensional topological influences and constraints on the function of optical, chemical, and biological applications such as optical films, microreactors, and cell encapsulation. Patterned microstructure arrays made with inorganic materials such as ceramic and metal are also necessary for better color resolution in FPDs such as a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), Plasma Display Panel (PDP), and Field Emission Display (FED). In the manufacturing process of PDP, development for high resolution formation process of the inorganic patterns such as the ceramic barrier ribs and the metallic electrodes has been the main topic. Up to date, diverse fabrication processes have been developed and some of them have been applied to the production of barrier ribs. Currently, the barrier ribs have been formed by the sand blasting process, chemical etching process, and the photolithographic method with photosensitive barrier rib paste; however, they still have many issues in the fabrication of HAR barrier ribs. Therefore, the new conceptive fabrication process is necessary to fabricate the ultra-slim patterns with HARs. In this work, a new manufacturing process has been developed for the fabrication of HAR inorganic microstructures. First, X-ray lithography process was devel...