The rapid development of the flat panel display (FPD) industry and then the touch industry in the 2000s and 2010s led to the need to increase production productivity while reducing costs. At the same time, special attention was paid to the stability of the deposition process, ease of maintenance and the possibility to work with substrates of diagonal size up to 65+".
The solution was found in continuously working vacuum process coating systems called INLINE. In most cases magnetron based coating systems are designed to work without interruption with predefined cycle times as a conveyor during several weeks that allow to increase the degree of automation and improve all production parameters.
INLINE coaters for FPD and touch are classified by substrate (or coating area) size from Gen 1 with coating area 270x360 mm to Gen 10.5 with coating area 2940x3370 mm.
Different substrate types and special requirements to coating process formed three basic designes of INLINE coater depending on substrate orientation:
- vertical
- horizontal
- tilted
The AURORA platform combines the vertical and the tilted coater design solution for Gen 4 up to Gen 8 and the ASTRA platform the horizontal inline coaters from Gen 2 up to Gen 4.5.
I-Photonics INLINE coaters have a modular design and can be equipped with AC or DC magnetron sputtering stations with cylindrycal or planar cathodes for the following types of coating:
- ITO and Index Match ITO (or other TCO)
- Anti reflection coating (AR)
- AR +AF (anti finger print coating)
- NCVM color coating
- Metalization
Our coaters can be equipped with AF system for hydrophobic coatings. This with AR coating in one vacuum cycle to reach outstanding quality.
| AURORA | ASTRA |
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| INLINE vertical modular multifunction coating platform | INLINE horizontal modular multifunction coating platform |
