IDC Flat Panel Expertise Featured in CleanRooms Magazine
Oversized Cleanrooms Assume Huge Role in Emerging Flat-Panel
Display Production
Here are excerpts from an IDC-authored article in the August 2002 issue of CleanRooms magazine. The topic is how cleanroom operators are dealing with the large scale and special demands of cleanrooms in flat panel plants. The IDC authors are technologist Michael O'Halloran (PDX), cleanroom specialist Richard Grout (TNN), and flat panel expert Nancy Pettengill (SJC).
It's hard to believe, but as late as the 1980s, "cleanroom"
was not a familiar term in much of the manufacturing world.
In the time since, the cleanroom concept has never remained static.
It has continued to evolve and respond to the dynamically changing
needs of high-technology production environments around the world.
One glance at a latest-generation flat-panel manufacturing facility
will convince the most casual observer that this new breed of cleanroom
is anything but business as usual.
In broad terms, cleanrooms assume two distinctly different responsibilities
and forms in the flat-panel industry-as new technology incubator
and high-volume producer. As in any emerging industry, flat-panel
producers have been struggling to sort through and refine production
methodologies that can deliver high volume at low cost.
Small-scale flat-panel products, such as miniature televisions,
handheld games and laptop computers have been successfully penetrating
the consumer market for some time. This nascent industry's biggest
challenge, however, will be achieving heavy market penetration for
larger projects, primarily big-screen televisions.
Attaining this goal would have a revolutionary impact on the industry's
growth, but this is a vision whose fate is largely predicated on
price. The generally accepted consumer price at which flat-panel
TVs will achieve mass-market penetration is $100 per diagonal inch
of display dimension.
This translates to $3,200 for a 32-inch diagonal flat-panel TV
or $4,200 for a 42-inch diagonal unit. Actual retail prices are
currently running just less than $5,000 for the least-expensive
major brand 32-inch flat panel, and about $6,500 for 42-inch units.
These products involve plasma display panel (PDP) technology.
Flat-panel producers are basing their production efficiency goals
on values that retail customers are willing to assign to large-scale
flat-panel products. The industry knows that its future prospects
depend on its ability to lower production costs until the consumer's
"dream" price points can be met. Some U.S. discount retailers
are approaching that threshold by offering 32-inch units for $3,999,
and you can get a 20-inch diagonal active matrix liquid crystal
display (AMLCD) TV in the North American market for $2,000.
However, penetration of the mainstream mass market for these products
still has a way to go.
Steady improvements in flat-panel production technology have allowed
the industry to continue to edge closer to that desired level of
manufacturing cost effectiveness, and cleanrooms have been a central
ingredient in that advancement. However, the cleanroom requirements
of the flat-panel industry demand more than a "plug-and-play"
adaptation of "off-the-shelf" cleanroom approaches standard
in the microelectronics industry.
Key flat-panel technologies that have already graduated from the
R&D and pilot plant echelons to high-volume production status
include AMLCD and plasma. Leading manufacturers in these technologies
are primarily in Japan, Korea and, more recently, Taiwan.
In the industry's emergent tier are such developing flat-panel
technologies as field-emission display (FED) and electroluminescent
(EL). Within the EL family are such offshoot approaches as thin
film, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) and inorganic light-emitting
diode (ILED). These technologies are in various stages of development,
from pure R&D to small-scale production.
The large size of the end product is a key driver in the planning
of flat-panel cleanrooms, which accommodate mammoth production tools
20 or 30 meters in length.
Glass sizes for flat-panel display (FPD) production facilities
range from approximately 400x400 mm to 1.2x1.6 meters, depending
on product type. Glass sizes for pilot facilities range from 370x470
mm to 600x720 mm. The size of these products dwarfs the deliverables
of the microelectronics industry's latest-generation product, the
300-mm wafer.
The much larger size of the end product is reflected in every aspect
of a flat-panel plant's design and operation- most notably in cleanroom
criteria. In one Generation 5 flat-panel plant currently in design
in Asia, the cleanroom space is five times larger than the largest
U.S. 300-mm chip plant. For comparison, this facility encompasses
more square footage than a Boeing 777 hanger of approximately one
million square feet, except that it stacks that immense quantity
of space in three 350,000-square-foot levels.
The primary focus of R&D operations is understandably to advance
new product technology. However, it is important for such operations
to share some portion of the focus with the advancement of their
manufacturing technology as well. Many promising new products have
been needlessly doomed because they failed to successfully transition
from the R&D or pilot-plant stages to a high-volume production
status.
This peril threatens the flat-panel industry at a time of particular
vulnerability. It is a time when progressive new production approaches
could be dismissed simply because they lack an "exit strategy"
to smoothly scale them up from the research lab to economical high-volume
output on the factory floor.
Pilot facilities can usually handle 4,000 to 8,000 sheets per month.
However, the throughput capacity for FPD production facilities jumps
up to 25,000 to 90,000 sheets (mother glass) per month. As manufacturing
technologies prove out at the R&D level, production capacities
must have a practical, efficient and achievable path forward to
smoothly ramp up and meet commercial volume requirements without
massive factory modifications.
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