A Study on the Optimal Design of Heating Chamber in Sputtering Process for Large-Sized LCD Panel Manufacturing

A thermal model was constructed to simulate the combined heat transfer phenomena, including thermal radiation in the heating chamber, during the sputtering process. The changes in thermal characteristics when thermal radiation occurred within the chamber system were analyzed using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) method. The research emphasis in this paper was to explore the temperature distribution on the large glass panel. In order to achieve the temperature uniformity criterion (±15°C), the chamber design was improved to prevent a significant difference between temperature distributions. Several design factors were made to observe the effect on temperature distribution. After optimizing the chamber structure, the IR heater settings were in the end determined to meet the standards of three different sputtering circumstances.