Large area processing : Meniscus coating of thin film polymer dielectric & photoresist

The desire to reduce thin film MCM costs has led practitioners to large area processing (LAP) of these structures on panel sizes and using tools similar to the flat panel display industry. While IC fabrication has traditionally used spin coating for the deposition of polymeric formulations such as photoresists, new large format processes allow the use of high efficiency techniques such as meniscus coating. We have examined the coating of photo BCB and photoresist on 400 mm panels using a SCS Cavex meniscus coater and found we can achieve 2% or better intra panel uniformity and panel to panel variation of 90%. Drying of the panels and residence time in the coater does not affect the concentration of temperature sensitive cross linkers in the formulations. Meniscus coating has been shown to be a viable technique for large area processing of dielectric and photoresist materials.