Plasma deposition and plasma reactive ion etching are critical processes in the production of active matrix LCD's. This is true for AMLCDs using either amorphous silicon or polysilicon switches. The successful completion of this project will result in the design and construction of new-concept plasma deposition and rie processing machines for the manufacture of large area AMLCDs. These new machines will provide a 10-fold increase in throughput and will reduce by a factor of 5 to 10 the product yield losses due to particle contamination in these processes compared with machines which are currently available today. These throughput improvements will result in a one-third reduction of the capital equipment costs necessary for a production plant. The increased throughput, increased yield, and reduced capital cost will result in a significant reduction in the manufacturing cost of AMLCDs. Anticipated benefits/potential commercial applications - the major anticipated benefit of the proposed work will be a reduction in the price of large area, high definition AMLCDs. In the near term this will benefit US. Military customers. Since this work will "leap frog" current state of the art plasma machines, it will be a vital factor in establishing commercial US. Production of AMLCDs competitive with foreign sources for lap-top computers, work stations, HDTV, etc.Key words:
