An optimal yield mapping approach for the small and medium sized liquid crystal displays

Abstract

The ability to improve yield in the manufacturing process is an important competitiveness determinant for LCD factories. The TFT-LCD contains three major manufacturing sectors: the array, cell, and module assembly processes. The yield loss from the cell process is one of the most critical steps. To increase the cell process yield, more conforming LCD panels must be produced from one glass substrate. The sorter is a robot used in LCD manufacturing systems to achieve higher yield for matching TFT and CF plates. This sorter contains several ports that can transfer CF glasses from CF cassettes to match TFT glasses. In this paper, the Hungarian method is applied to solve the yield-mapping problem with the sorter. This method provides an optimal solution to improve the cell process yield.