Incremental printing of symbolic information – Ink jet – Ejector mechanism
Reexamination Certificate
2001-12-18
2004-08-31
Nguyen, Lamson D (Department: 2861)
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Ink jet
Ejector mechanism
C427S266000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06783208
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus that produces a color filter used for optical devices, such as a liquid crystal device, and the like. The present invention also relates to a method and apparatus to manufacture a liquid crystal device having a color filter. The present invention further relates to a method and apparatus to manufacture an EL device that displays by using an EL luminescent layer. The present invention further relates to a method of discharging a material to an object, and an apparatus that controls a head. The present invention further relates to an electronic apparatus having a liquid crystal device or an EL device manufactured by the above-described method.
2. Description of Related Art
Recently, display devices, such as a liquid crystal device, an EL device, and the like have been widely used as display sections of electronic apparatuses, such as cell phones, portable computers, etc. Also, in recent years, full-color displays using a display device have been increasingly made. A full-color display of a liquid crystal device is made by, for example, transmitting light, which is modulated by a liquid crystal layer, through a color filter. The color filter includes dot-shaped color filter elements of R (red), G (green) and B (blue), which are formed in a predetermined arrangement such as a stripe, delta, or mosaic arrangement on the surface of a substrate of glass, plastic, or the like.
In a full-color display of an EL device, dot-shaped EL luminescent layers of R (red), G (green) and B (blue) colors are provided in a predetermined arrangement on electrodes, which are formed in any desired arrangement, for example, a stripe, delta, or mosaic arrangement, on the surface of a substrate made of, for example, glass, plastic, or the like. The voltage applied to these electrodes is controlled for each pixel to emit light of a desired color from each pixel, thereby performing a full-color display.
In the related art, it is known that a photolithography process is used to pattern the filter elements of each of the R, G, and B colors of the color filter, or to pattern the pixels of each of the R, G, and B colors of the EL device. However, the use of the photolithography process has complicates the process, and increases the cost due to the high consumption of each color material and photoresist, etc.
In order to solve the problems, a method has been proposed in which a filter material, an EL luminescent material, or the like is discharged in a dot shape to form a dot-arrangement filter element or EL luminescent layer, or the like.
Consideration will now be given to a case in which, as shown in FIG.
23
(
b
), a plurality of dot-shaped filter elements
303
are formed by an ink jet method in each of a plurality of panel areas
302
, which are set on the surface of a large-area substrate of glass, plastic, or the like, for example, a so-called motherboard
301
shown in FIG.
23
(
a
).
In this case, during several times (twice in the case shown in
FIG. 23
) of main scanning with an ink jet head
306
having a nozzle row
305
including a plurality of nozzles
304
arranged in a row as shown in FIG.
23
(
c
) for each panel area
302
, as shown by arrows A
1
and A
2
in FIG.
23
(
b
), a filter material, for example, ink, is selectively discharged from the plurality of nozzles to form the filter elements
303
at desired positions.
The filter elements
303
of each of the R, G, and B colors are formed in an appropriate arrangement such as a stripe, delta or mosaic arrangement. Therefore, for ink discharge from the ink jet head
306
, the ink jet head
306
for discharging each of the R, G, and B colors is previously provided for each of the three colors R, G and B so that the ink jet heads
306
are successively used to form an arrangement of the three colors of R, G and B on the motherboard
301
, as shown in FIG.
23
(
b
).
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The ink jet head
306
generally causes variations in the amounts of the ink discharged from the plurality of nozzles
304
which constitute the nozzle line
305
. For example, the ink jet head
306
has such an ink discharge property Q that the discharge amounts at positions corresponding to both ends of the nozzle line
305
are large; the discharge amounts at intermediate positions between both ends and the center are small; the discharge amounts in the central portion of the nozzle line
305
are medium between both ends and the intermediate positions, as shown in FIG.
24
(
a
).
Therefore, when the filter elements
303
are formed by the ink jet head
306
as shown in FIG.
23
(
b
), dark stripes with a high density are formed at positions P
1
corresponding to the ends of the ink jet head
306
or center P
2
, or both the positions P
1
and the center P
2
, thereby causing nonuniformity in the planar light transmission property of the color filter, as shown in FIG.
24
(
b
).
The present invention has been achieved in consideration of the above problem, and an object of the present invention is to provide a method and apparatus to produce each of optical members which are capable of making uniform in a plane the optical properties of an optical member, such as the distribution properties of light transmission of a color filter, the color display properties of a liquid crystal device, the luminescence properties of an EL luminescent plane, etc.
A method of producing a color filter of the present invention includes a first main scanning step of scanning, along a main scanning direction, one of a substrate and a head relative to the other, the head having a nozzle row including an arrangement of a plurality of nozzles, while discharging a filter material from the plurality of nozzles to the substrate, a second main scanning step of scanning one of the head and the substrate relative to the other along the main scanning direction while discharging a filter material to the substrate. In the second main scanning step, scanning is performed in such a manner that a portion of the crossing region of the nozzle row and the substrate overlaps with at least a portion the crossing region in the first main scanning step.
In the method of producing a color filter of the present invention, each of the filter elements of the color filter is formed to a predetermined thickness by repeatedly discharging ink from the plurality of nozzles, not by single scanning with the head. Therefore, even if there are variations in the amounts of the ink discharged from the plurality of nozzles, the occurrence of variations in thickness of the plurality of filter elements can be prevented, thereby making the distribution properties of light transmission of the color filter uniform in a plane.
Since the method of producing a color filter uses the head including the plurality of nozzles, of course, the method has no need to pass through such a complicated step as in a method including a photolithography process, and causes no waste of materials.
Also, in the method of producing a color filter, preferably, the first main scanning step is performed several times so that the crossing region of the nozzle row and the substrate in each performance of the main scanning step does not overlap with the crossing regions in the other performances of the main scanning steps. Namely, the entire surface of the substrate in a dry state can be set to a uniformly wet state with a uniform thickness before a filter material is repeatedly discharged several times to form the filter elements having the predetermined thickness, and thus marked boundaries can be prevented from remaining at the ink overlap boundaries in subsequent repeated coatings.
Not only the first main scanning step, but also the second main scanning step is performed several times so that the crossing region of the nozzle row and the substrate in each performance of the second main scanning step does not overlap with the crossing regions in the other times of the second main scanning steps.
In this method, each of the filter elements
Aruga Hisashi
Katagami Satoru
Kawase Tomomi
Kiguchi Hiroshi
Shimizu Masaharu
Nguyen Lamson D
Seiko Epson Corporation
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