Jun AMAKO,^* Masami MURAI and Tomio SONEHARA

Corporate R & D, Seiko Epson Corporation, 3-3-5, Owa, Suwa, Nagano, 392-8502 Japan

(Received September 17, 1997; Accepted December 22, 1997)

Array illumination built on a binary phase grating with a green, Q-switched, pulse Nd:YAG laser is used for patterning indium-tin-oxide films into electrodes of liquid crystal display panels. To this end, even-fanout gratings are recursively designed by simulated-annealing algorithm and are realized in quartz glasses by dry- etching. While an array of identically intense beam spots strikes the film, a table supporting the film moves in a direction orthogonal to said spots array at a constant speed, forming a large group of equi-spaced grooves in the film. A machining yield of 1600 mm/s has been attained using a 32×1 grating.

Key words : laser-processing, liquid crystal panel, phase grating, array illumination

*To whom correspondence should be addressed.