Coating technology applications vary from relatively simple applications having a single applied coating material, such as polyurethane applied to hardwood flooring materials to more involved applications having many layers. The semiconductor industry relies on coating technology for the fabrication of products with complex, sequentially coated layers with specific chemical or physical properties. The multi-layer coatings used in a typical semiconductor chip processing protocol typically create separate insulating layers, semiconductor layers, and conducting layers to produce electronic components, such as capacitors and transistors, on a microscopic scale. Often, these multi-layer coatings require a specific cure time and environment as each coating is sequentially applied to achieve desired characteristics.
Sequential coating manufacturing processes like those employed in semiconductor processing may suffer from inefficiency and quality control problems if too many steps are needed to produce a product. In particular, cure steps may be difficult to implement in production situations like roll-to-roll or web-based manufacturing, where a flexible sheet or roll of material is guided automatically through a series of manufacturing steps. In these types of manufacturing situations, each cure step requires that the material spend significant time in a waiting zone or accumulator while the area being cured is treated appropriately. Therefore, additional curing or manufacturing steps may require a correspondingly greater capital investment in machinery and materials, and may also result in longer manufacturing times.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds