JP2007133306A - Method of manufacturing color filter - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To realize stable ink delivery by conquering a defect in pattern formation by a tilting system and further by reducing transferring amount of delivery pattern information than before, for example than a patent reference 1 and at the same time to provide the method of manufacturing a color filter by which no void is produced at ink delivery onto a partition wall outer periphery part. <P>SOLUTION: An Ink delivery printing apparatus has ink delivery sections for delivering a plurality of colors of ink. The ink delivery sections are arranged in a first direction and have a plurality of ink delivery ports for delivering ink and the ink delivery sections are arranged along the first direction for each color. While relatively moving a substrate and the ink delivery section, a colored ink layer is formed at the opening of the partition wall by forming colored ink by an ink delivery apparatus. Thus the color filter is manufactured. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a film-based color filter manufacturing method, a glass-based color filter manufacturing method, and a thin-film electronic circuit board manufacturing method using an ink discharge printing apparatus. The ink ejecting apparatus ejects ink from an ink ejecting portion to a printing medium to form a pattern. The ink discharge unit includes a plurality of ink discharge ports. The present invention relates to a method for controlling an ink discharge printing apparatus that generates a fine colored ink film pattern with high accuracy. In addition, the present invention relates to an organic electroluminescent element in which an organic light emitting medium layer or a hole transport layer is formed using an ink discharge printing apparatus.

Conventionally, a method called a tilt method is generally used as an ink ejection method. The tilt method is a method of discharging colored ink to the opening of the partition by transporting the ink discharge unit in parallel to the line direction of the partition (or colored layer) having a shape including a line pattern.
In the tilt method, the interval (pitch) between the ink ejection ports needs to be matched with the sensation of the colored layer, and the ink ejection section itself is tilted at a certain angle in order to adjust the pitch of the ink ejection ports. For this reason, in order to eject onto the substrates having different pixel pitches by the ink ejection part, there is a problem that the angle of the ink ejection part and the X direction of the ink ejection part must be changed first, and this adjustment is often difficult and time consuming. It is such a thing.
Further, when a plurality of ink ejection methods are arranged in series by the tilt method, it is almost impossible to arrange the joints for each ink ejection unit without error. Arranging a plurality of ink ejecting portions with as few errors in mechanical accuracy as possible has a problem that it takes an enormous amount of adjustment time and affects productivity.
In addition, since the number of ink discharge portions that can be used is reduced depending on the image pitch, there is a problem that the discharge operation must be repeated a plurality of times, and the tact time increases.

Also, discharge pattern information storage that stores bitmapped discharge pattern information for each ink discharge unit according to the type of ink for the purpose of drawing quickly without causing a shift in the ink landing position A step, a position detection signal generation step for generating a position detection signal by continuously detecting the position of a moving substrate, a discharge signal generation step for generating a discharge signal by dividing the position detection signal, and a discharge A drawing apparatus and a drawing method including a discharge pattern information transfer step of transferring stored discharge pattern information using a signal as a trigger, and a step of driving an ink jet that discharges each ink based on the transferred discharge pattern information. It is known (Patent Document 2). According to this method, a pattern recorded in the discharge pattern information can be formed on the printing medium by the ink discharge printing apparatus, and can be used, for example, for forming a colored layer of a color filter.
Further, in a device in which a carriage having a plurality of ink discharge heads and a drawing base material move relative to each other and discharge, a discharge signal is generated every time the previous carriage that is moving is continuously detected. Ink ejection was performed by reading ejection pattern information from the memory.
When forming a color filter with an ink ejection printing apparatus, the colored layer of the color filter is composed of a repetitive pattern portion and other portions, but most are repetitive portions.
Therefore, when ink is ejected to the repetitive portion, the pattern information per unit of the repetitive portion is transferred as ejection pattern information to the memory on the drive board that drives the ink ejection portion, and ink is ejected to other portions. In such a case, other pattern data was appropriately transferred (Patent Document 3).
However, according to the above conventional method, there is a problem in that the amount of data increases because the data to be transferred as a whole is a combination of the repetitive part and the other part. In other words, according to the conventional method, the larger the drawing size on the substrate, the more memory capacity is required to hold the ejection pattern information, leading to an increase in hardware manufacturing cost. Further, there is a problem that the discharge pattern information transfer time is increased and productivity is lowered.
In addition, a color filter manufactured by an ink ejection printing method usually includes a substrate, a partition including a line pattern provided on the substrate, and a plurality of colored ink layers provided in the opening of the partition. Ink is discharged from the ink discharge portion into the opening. Usually, to prevent mixing of inks, the partition includes a material that repels ink. However, the outer edge of the substrate has a high proportion of the partition, and the amount of material that repels this ink is large. There was a problem that the ink thus formed was easily repelled, and a defect (hereinafter referred to as whitening) that an ink film was not formed occurred.

Further, conventionally, as the drawing size on the substrate with higher definition and larger screen becomes larger, the number of signal lines for transferring ejection pattern information increases, and the signal lines have to be longer as the apparatus becomes larger. This will lead to an increase in hardware production costs.
For this reason, in the conventional method using a wire for the signal line, there is a problem that a dynamic load is applied to the movement of the stage to reduce the accuracy.
Further, if the signal line is made longer by the wire, it is easily affected by noise such as electromagnetic waves in the production facility, and signal transmission becomes unstable. There has been a problem that the coating quality is lowered, for example, a predetermined ink film is not formed.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-101212 JP 2003-266671 A JP 2004-230379 A Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-199665

  The present invention was made to solve the problems of the above-described technology, overcomes the drawbacks of the pattern formation by the tilt method, and further reduces the amount of ejection pattern information to be transferred conventionally, for example, from Patent Document 1, An object is to realize stable ink ejection and signal transfer, and at the same time, an object is to provide a color filter manufacturing method that does not cause white spots in ink ejection at the outer edge of the partition wall.

In order to overcome the above problems, the present invention takes the following measures.
That is, the invention of claim 1 is a method for manufacturing a color filter having a plurality of color pixels for discharging colored ink to openings of partition walls provided on a substrate based on desired drawing information using an ink discharge printing apparatus. In the method,
The ink ejection printing apparatus includes an ink ejection unit that ejects a plurality of colors of ink,
The ink ejection part includes a plurality of ink ejection ports arranged in the first direction and ejecting ink,
The ink ejection part is arranged along the first direction for each color,
A colored ink layer is formed by forming a colored ink in an opening of the partition wall with an ink discharge device while relatively moving the substrate and the ink discharge portion along a second direction substantially perpendicular to the first direction. And a color filter manufacturing method.
The invention described in claim 2 generates discharge pattern information including information on the number of times each ink discharge port performs discharge from the drawing information, and before forming the colored ink layer on the substrate, the discharge pattern information is converted into ink. 2. The color filter manufacturing method according to claim 1, wherein the color ink layer is transferred to a memory of a discharge printing apparatus and a colored ink layer is formed based on the discharge pattern information.
In the invention according to claim 3, the ink ejection unit includes a pattern calculation generator,
Only the information of the part that repeatedly becomes the same pattern in the drawing information is retained in the memory of the ink ejection printing apparatus as ejection pattern information,
3. The method for producing a color filter according to claim 2, wherein the colored ink layer is formed on the basis of the information created by the pattern calculation generator when discharging the portion other than the portion that becomes the repetitive pattern.
The invention according to claim 4 forms a colored ink layer based on the information created by the pattern calculation generator when discharging to the opening of the outer edge of the substrate among the openings of the partition.
In this case, the method for producing a color filter according to claim 3, wherein the number of ink ejections is made larger than that of the repeated pattern portion.

According to the present invention, the ejection pattern information does not include all the drawing information of the substrate, and the repeated portion holds at least one piece of information of one unit pattern. Therefore, the information transferred to the memory of the ink ejection printing apparatus The amount has decreased.
In addition, even if there is drawing information that is different from the repetitive part, the pattern calculation generator on the head driver in the ink discharge unit is used to generate information by calculating with hardware, so the discharge pattern of the non-repetitive part There is no need to transfer information.
Further, among the openings of the partition walls, when discharging to the openings at the outer edge of the substrate, a colored ink layer is formed based on the information created by the pattern calculation generator, and at this time, the repeated pattern portion As a result, the number of ink ejections was increased more than that, and the occurrence of whitening at the outer edge portion could be prevented.
In addition, according to the present invention, since a large amount of information can be transmitted by an optical cable, it is possible to eliminate a problem caused by conventional wire transmission.
Further, since the amount of information that can be transmitted has increased, it has become possible to transmit information including information relating to ejection timing and ejection pattern information to the memory of the ink ejection printing apparatus in a packet system. As a result, the ink discharge synchronization accuracy of each ink discharge port is improved, and a highly accurate colored ink layer can be formed.

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.
The ink ejection printing apparatus of the present invention includes a first direction (hereinafter referred to as X direction), a second direction substantially orthogonal to the first direction (hereinafter referred to as Y direction), and the first direction and second direction. A stage that can move in a substantially orthogonal direction (hereinafter referred to as a θ direction) is provided.
The ink ejection printing apparatus installs a substrate on this stage and moves the stage relative to the fixed ink ejection section to perform pattern ejection. It is also possible to move the ink discharge section while fixing the stage. The movement of the stage is controlled by the main controller.
The ink discharge printing apparatus includes a plurality of ink discharge portions in which a large number of ink discharge ports capable of discharging ink are arranged, and the ink discharge portions are arranged so that the ink discharge ports are arranged in the X direction. The ink ejection unit is connected to a head driver including a buffer memory (hereinafter also simply referred to as a memory) and a pattern calculation generator.
In addition, the ink discharge printing apparatus includes a main controller that accumulates discharge pattern information created based on the drawing information of the color filter. Before performing discharge, the ink controller prints the discharge pattern information from the main controller. The data is transferred to the head driver of the ejection unit and stored in a buffer memory on the head driver. Then, a discharge signal is generated by the head driver based on the encoder signal and trigger signal sent from the stage controller of the stage, and discharge is performed by reading discharge pattern information from the buffer memory based on the generated discharge signal. With respect to lines having the same pattern repeatedly, one unit information is recorded in the buffer memory as ejection pattern information, and ejection is performed based on that information. When ejecting a portion that is not repeated, it is set in advance so that ejection pattern information is created by the pattern calculation generator of the head driver, and ejection is performed based on this information.

An embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS.
FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing a configuration example of a coating apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is an outline view showing an example of the overall configuration of the coating apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 3 is a flowchart showing a control example of the coating apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 4 is a diagram showing the memory capacity when all the pattern information to be drawn is held.
FIG. 5 is a diagram showing the memory capacity when the minimum information necessary for coating is held in the memory.
FIG. 6 is a diagram showing the memory capacity when information in the case of using the function of the pattern calculation generator necessary for coating is held in the memory.
FIG. 7 is a diagram illustrating an example of transmission information including ejection pattern information and ejection timing information.
FIG. 8 is an outline view showing an example of the overall configuration of the coating apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention.
That is, as shown in FIG. 1, the main controller 1 is a part that controls the entire coating apparatus in cooperation with the stage controller 2, the trigger controller 3, the encoder driver 4, and the head driver 5. A plurality of ink ejection units 7 are connected to the head driver 5, and the head driver 5 includes a memory 6 and a pattern calculation generator 7.

Next, the operation of the ink ejection printing apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention configured as described above will be described with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG. Note that the processing flow shown in the flowchart of FIG. 3 is merely an example, and the present invention is not limited to this example.
First, in order to operate the coating apparatus according to the embodiment of the present invention, the stage is initialized from the main controller 1. (S1).
Next, parameters are set in the stage controller 2, the trigger controller 3, and the encoder controller 4, respectively. (S2).

Next, discharge operation parameters are set (S3).
Next, bitmap information (ejection pattern information) of the drawing pattern is stored in the memory 6 in the head driver 5. (S4).
Next, the stage is moved and the discharge start position is adjusted (S5).
Next, the coordinate value of the stage adjusted in S5 is read. (S6).
Next, the stage is moved so that the head is at the start position (S7).
Next, flushing is performed to improve the head condition (S8).
Next, the stage is moved in the Y direction (S9), and a signal for instructing the head driver 5 to start ejection from the stage controller 2 via the trigger controller 3 at the position read in step S6. A certain trigger signal is enabled (S10), and the ink discharge unit starts the discharge operation on the substrate in synchronization with the encoder signal from the stage (S11).
First, in the case of a line different from the transferred information, a pattern is generated by calculating with a pattern calculator (S12). Next, the repetition pattern (S13) is repeatedly output until the repetition number (S14) is reached.
The operation ends when the ejection is finished for the drawing area.

The embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. 7 and 8 from the viewpoint of information transmission means. The board A shown in FIG. 8 corresponds to the head driver in FIG. The relay board shown in FIG. 8 corresponds to the signal transmission interface in FIG. Further, what is shown as a target in FIG. 8 corresponds to the head in FIG.
In the present invention, information transmission from the board A to the relay board can be performed by an optical cable. By using an optical cable, the transmission capacity per line was increased, the cable space for transmission was reduced, and the problem of noise caused by the transmission cable could be solved.
Further, since the transmission capacity is increased, it is possible to include information related to the ejection timing in addition to the ejection pattern information in the transmission information sent from the board A to the relay board. An example of such an information format is shown in FIG. Here, information relating to ejection timing can be included in portions indicated as CF and GF.

As described above, according to the present invention, the ink ejection printing apparatus can perform drawing without holding all necessary drawing information in advance. In the example shown in FIG. 4, one pixel is 4 bits, and the drawing pattern represents drawing information of 768 pixels × 1024 lines. The memory capacity at this time is 393.216 KBytes. On the other hand, according to the present invention, as illustrated in the example shown in FIG. 6, since one pixel is 4 bits and the drawing pattern is 768 pixels × 1 line, it becomes 0.384 Kbytes, which is compared with the example shown in FIG. Thus, an information capacity of 1/1024 is sufficient. In addition, even when an optical element such as a color filter or an organic electroluminescence element is produced by an ink ejection printing apparatus, it can be ejected without whitening the formed ink film.
In addition, according to the present invention, in an ink ejection printing apparatus, it is possible to perform drawing without using a signal line that is necessary for transmitting all the necessary drawing information by signal transmission using a wire as conventionally used. Become. The example shown in FIG. 5 represents an example in which 20 MHz serial data can be transmitted through 20 channels. Since the transfer rate at this time is 4 Gbps, 20 channels can be sufficiently transmitted with one optical cable. The packet transmitted at this time is data representing the timing of each head as shown in FIG. If this method and apparatus are used, only one cable is required, which is conventionally required for four cables. In addition, since it is not affected by electrical disturbance noise at all, white spots occur in the formed ink film even when creating optical elements such as color filters and organic electroluminescent elements with an ink ejection printing device. It can discharge without.

Functional block diagram showing a configuration example of a coating apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention Outline drawing showing an overall configuration example of a coating apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention The flowchart figure which shows the example of control which concerns on embodiment of this invention It is a figure which shows the memory capacity at the time of hold | maintaining all the pattern information to draw. It is a figure which shows the memory capacity at the time of hold | maintaining the minimum information required for discharge in memory. It is a figure which shows the memory capacity at the time of hold | maintaining the information in the case of using the function of the pattern calculation generator required for discharging to a memory. It is a figure which shows the example of the transmission information containing discharge pattern information and discharge timing information. It is an outline figure showing the example of whole composition of the coating device concerning an embodiment of the invention.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Main controller 2 ... Stage controller 3 ... Trigger controller 4 ... Encoder controller 5 ... Head driver 6 ... Memory 7 ... Pattern generator 8 ... Head head driver row 12 ... Base material 13 ... Stage

Claims (6)

In a method of manufacturing a color filter having a plurality of color pixels for discharging colored ink to openings of partition walls provided on a substrate based on predetermined drawing information using an ink discharge printing apparatus.
The ink ejection printing apparatus includes an ink ejection unit that ejects a plurality of colors of ink,
The ink ejection part includes a plurality of ink ejection ports arranged in the first direction and ejecting ink,
The ink ejection part is arranged along the first direction for each color,
A colored ink layer is formed by forming a colored ink in an opening of the partition wall with an ink discharge device while relatively moving the substrate and the ink discharge portion along a second direction substantially perpendicular to the first direction. A method for producing a color filter, comprising:   From the drawing information, it generates discharge pattern information including information on the number of times each ink discharge port performs discharge, and before forming the colored ink layer on the substrate, this discharge pattern information is transferred to the memory of the ink discharge printing apparatus, The method for producing a color filter according to claim 1, wherein a colored ink layer is formed based on the discharge pattern information. The ink ejection unit includes a pattern calculation generator,
Only the information of the part that repeatedly becomes the same pattern in the drawing information is retained in the memory of the ink ejection printing apparatus as ejection pattern information,
3. The method for producing a color filter according to claim 2, wherein the colored ink layer is formed on the basis of the information created by the pattern calculation generator when ejecting a portion other than a portion that becomes a repetitive pattern.   Discharge pattern information including information on the number of times each ink discharge port performs discharge is generated from the predetermined drawing information, and the discharge pattern information is transmitted to the memory of the ink discharge printing apparatus using an optical cable. The data transfer method in the coating apparatus of Claim 1.   The method for manufacturing a color filter according to claim 4, wherein the ejection pattern information includes information related to ejection timing.   The color filter manufacturing method according to claim 4, wherein the ejection pattern information is transferred by a packet method.