A novel stylus profiler without nonlinearity and parasitic motion for FPD inspection system

Abstract

There are increasing needs to inspect micro-pattern of flat panel display (FPD) device such as PDP and LCD. The inspection system should be able to measure over large size mother glass with high productivity and accuracy. Stylus profilers are adopted as an inspection system. To scan over large and heavy FPD device specimen, a "tip-scanning" head for stylus profiler is required. A simple method to realize a tip-scanning system is to miniaturize the whole scanning unit. In this study, a novel stylus profiler is proposed as a tip-scanning stylus profiler. The novel stylus profiler has leaf spring instead of conventional lever and pivot. To measure position of stylus an optical senor is used. Linear variable differential transformer is applied to feed-back scanning stage displacement. The stage is actuated by a voice coil motor (VCM). Target performances of the stylus profiler head are in the stroke over 20 mu m with high accuracy. Specifications of xy-scanning stage are over 250 mu mx250 mu m and high bandwidth over 20 Hz. The magnetic and elastic characteristics of the mechanism are designed based on finite element (FE) analysis. After fabrication of the head and stage, they are integrated. Current amplifier and feedback controller are also developed. The performance of the stylus profiler is also validated by inspecting standard sample.