Samsung's $4^{th}$ Generation TFT- LCD Production Line Concept

With the explosive growth of Note-PC and Desktop monitor market, TFT LCD market confronted a entire supply shortage during 1999. Forecasting a more booming stage for the next several years, many TFT-LCD panel manufacturers continue to expand the capacity of their existing plants and also make an additional investment in building new plants. The new investment is concentrated on the $4^{th}$ generation TFT LCD line in order to improve investment efficiency. The set up of the Samsung's Gen 3.5 line progressed with satisfactorily performance using $600{\times}720mm$ glass size. We have continuously reviewed several issues regarding the glass size for our next Gen. 4 line, which leads to adopt $730{\times}920mm$. Due to the continuous enlargement of a substrate size and following difficulty in transferring cassettes, the next line is expected to be the last line that employs "cassette transfer". The layout of the next line will shift from conventional "concentration-type" to "separation-type" configuration for the purpose of reducing transfer distance as well as transfer time. The details will be discussed in this paper.