Patent Application
20170067147
This application claims priority to and the benefit of Chinese Patent Application No. 201510568427.6 filed on Sep. 8, 2015, which application is incorporated herein in its entirety.
Embodiments of the invention relate to the technical area of evaporation technologies, more particularly, to a heating device for an evaporation machine and an evaporation machine.
In order to form an organic functional layer of an Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED), an evaporation machine is generally employed to heat and evaporate organic materials so that gaseous organic materials are deposited on a base substrate homogeneously. The conventional evaporation machines are classified into dot-source evaporation machines and linear-source evaporation machine, based on the type of heating source in use.
A linear heating device typically comprises a heating chamber, a nozzle and a crucible. A heating component and a cooling device and the like are fixed to the heating chamber, the nozzle is fixed to the top of the heating chamber, and the crucible is arranged inside the heating chamber. When an organic material placed in the crucible is heated and evaporated, a part of gaseous organic material is sprayed from an outlet of the nozzle to form an organic functional layer of the OLED, and another part of organic material is deposited on internal walls of the heating chamber, or adhered to the outlet of the nozzle and the like. The deposited organic material accumulates with time, which severely compromises the heating effect of the heating device. Therefore, the heating device must be cleaned and maintained regularly. Currently, there are mainly two cleaning maintenance methods of the heating device. The first method is referred to as completely disassembling maintenance, that is, the crucible is taken away from the heating chamber, and the heating component and cooling device are disassembled from the heating chamber; after that, the interior of the heating chamber and various components are cleaned or replaced, respectively. The second method is the so-called dry burning maintenance, that is, the organic material is volatilized at a relatively high rate under a temperature higher than a normal evaporating temperature so as to clean those organic material deposited on the interior surface of the heating chamber and the nozzle.
However, when completely disassembling maintenance method is employed, the process of disassembling the heating component and cooling device from the heating chamber and subsequent assembly process is complicated and takes a relatively long time, which therefore reduces a maintenance efficiency of the heating device. When dry burning maintenance method is employed, the organic material is prone to be pyrolyzed and carbonized due to the high temperature, making it impossible to remove the residual organic material in this way again. Moreover, the gas with a high temperature sprayed from the outlet of the nozzle may be deposited on the components around the outlet of the nozzle, which accelerates the aging of the components, thereby increasing a replacement frequency of the components. Moreover, if the organic material is a melting type material, the organic material will melt, flow and drip, thereby increasing the difficulty of maintenance.
A first aspect of the invention provides a heating device for an evaporation machine, comprising: a heating chamber, the heating chamber is provided with a cavity and an opening, the opening being arranged on a top of the heating chamber; an inner box, which is arranged in the cavity of the heating chamber and removable from the cavity of the heating chamber; and a nozzle component, which comprises a nozzle, wherein the nozzle is arranged on the top of the inner box, an inlet of the nozzle is connected to an interior of the inner box, and an outlet of the nozzle passes through the opening on the top of the heating chamber.
Another aspect of the invention further provides an evaporation machine, comprising the above heating device for an evaporation machine.
In order to clearly illustrate the technical solution of the embodiments of the invention, the drawings of the embodiments will be briefly described in the following; it is obvious that the described drawings are only related to some embodiments of the invention and thus are not limitative of the invention.
In order to make objects, technical details and advantages of the embodiments of the invention apparent, the technical solutions of the embodiments will be described in a clearly and fully understandable way in connection with the drawings related to the embodiments of the invention. Apparently, the described embodiments are just a part but not all of the embodiments of the invention. Based on the described embodiments herein, those skilled in the art can obtain other embodiment(s), without any inventive work, which should be within the scope of the invention.
Unless otherwise defined, all the technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meanings as commonly understood by one of ordinary skill in the art to which the present invention belongs. The terms “first,” “second,” etc., which are used in the description and the claims of the present application for invention, are not intended to indicate any sequence, amount or importance, but distinguish various components. Also, the terms such as “a,” “an,” etc., are not intended to limit the amount, but indicate the existence of at least one. The terms “comprises,” “comprising,” “includes,” “including,” etc., are intended to specify that the elements or the objects stated before these terms encompass the elements or the objects and equivalents thereof listed after these terms, but do not preclude the other elements or objects. The phrases “connect”, “connected”, etc., are not intended to define a physical connection or mechanical connection, but may include an electrical connection, directly or indirectly. “On,” “under,” “right,” “left” and the like are only used to indicate relative position relationship, and when the position of the object which is described is changed, the relative position relationship may be changed accordingly.
An embodiment of the invention provides a heating device for an evaporation machine and an evaporation machine. The heating device can be partly disassembled and cleaned, which avoids the complicated disassembly and assembly caused by a completely disassembly operation, thereby saving the maintenance time, increasing the maintenance efficiency. Moreover, it also avoids a dry burning clean process, reducing a replacement frequency of components around the outlet of a nozzle, as well as the difficulty of maintenance.
Due to the interior of the inner box 3 being connected to the interior of the crucible 5 and the inlet of the nozzle 41 respectively and an end of the nozzle 41 having the outlet passing through the opening 12 on the top of the heating chamber 1, the gaseous organic material evaporated by the crucible 5 first enters into the interior of the inner box 3, then enters into the nozzle 41 through the inlet of the nozzle 41, and then is sprayed from the outlet of the nozzle 41. The gaseous organic material will not flow through a gap between the heating chamber 1 and the inner box 3, which avoids the pollution of the cavity 11 caused by the organic material flowing into the gap, thereby omitting the cleaning operation on the heating chamber land the complicated disassembly and assembly operations. Moreover, it also reduces the replacement frequency of components around the outlet of the nozzle and the difficulty of maintenance. The nozzle 41 included in the nozzle component 4 is arranged on the top of the inner box 3, the crucible 5 is arranged in the interior of the inner box 3, the inner box 3 is removable from the cavity 11, and the crucible 5 is removable from the interior of the inner box 3. Due to the above configuration, when the heating device is being maintained, merely the inner box 3, the nozzle component 4 and the crucible 5 need to be removed from the heating chamber 1. Then, respective components are disassembled, and replaced or cleaned as required. Comparing with the conventional technology, the above partial disassembly method realizes a simpler assembly and disassembly operation of the heating device for an evaporation machine which is helpful for the cleaning maintenance, thereby saving the maintenance time and increasing the maintenance efficiency.
As an example, in order to further reduce the maintenance time and cost, the nozzle component 4 is designed to be detachable from the top wall of the inner box 3, as illustrated in
As an example, the nozzle component 4 has a configuration as illustrated in
As an example, the nozzle 41 is fixed to the fixing plate 42 by using a connector such as a bolt, a pin, a rivet or the like. Alternatively, it may also design the nozzle 41 and the fixing plate 42 as an integrally formed structure as illustrated in
A cross section of the fixing plate 42 is for example “H” shaped as illustrated in
In order to realize a linear heating effect of the heating device for an evaporation machine, the nozzle 41 is designed as for example to be plural and the plurality of nozzles 41 is fixed on the fixing plate 42, which allows the plurality of nozzles 41 and the fixing plate 42 to be connected together and can be detached from the inner box 3 as a whole.
As an example, the plurality of nozzles 41 are arranged along a straight line or a curved line. When the latter design is employed, the opening 12 on the top of the heating chamber 1 needs to be configured to have a relatively large width, that is, the width of the opening 12 is larger than that of the nozzles 41 corresponding to the opening 12, such that all the plurality of nozzles 41 arranged along a curved line can pass through the opening 12. However, when the opening 12 on the top of the heating chamber 1 has a relatively large width, the closeness of the heating chamber 1 may be affected. Alternatively, as an example, the plurality of nozzles 41 is arranged along a straight line, which allow the width of the opening 12 to be configured as the same as the width of the nozzles 41 corresponding to the opening 12, thus the width of the opening 12 is relatively small, thereby further increasing the closeness of the heating chamber 1, and the heating efficiency of the heating component 2 to the cavity 11.
As an example, the inner box 3 can be fabricated as illustrated in
A size of the lower opening may be larger than that of the inlet of the nozzle 41, or may be smaller than that of the inlet of the nozzle 41, or may be equal to that of the inlet of the nozzle 41. When the first solution is employed, that is, the size of the lower opening is larger than that of the inlet of the nozzle 41, the gaseous organic material goes into the inlet of the nozzle 41 through the lower opening, and some of the gaseous organic material is blocked by the surface of component in the connecting position, causing the gas to radially diffuse and goes into the connection gap, thereby increasing the amount of gas going into the gap, which further increases the possibility of the gas going into the gap between the heating chamber 1 and the inner box 3 through that gap. When the second solution is employed, that is, the size of the lower opening is smaller than that of the inlet of the nozzle 41, the gaseous organic material goes into the inlet of the nozzle 41 through the lower opening and reduces the speed. The gas having a relatively low speed has a relatively large static pressure to the side wall of the inlet of the nozzle 41, causing more gas to enter the connection gap, which also increases the possibility of the gas going into the gap between the heating chamber 1 and the inner box 3 through that gap. Therefore, as an example, the shape and size of the lower opening are same as the shape and size of the inlet of the nozzle 41, so that the gaseous organic material goes into the inlet of the nozzle 41 through the lower opening without a change of flow rate, and the value of static pressure on the wall of lower opening is identical to the value of static pressure on the side wall of the inlet and the static pressure is relatively small, which reduces the amount of the gas going into the connecting gap. Moreover, having no block in the connecting position reduces the possibility of the gas being radially diffused, thereby reducing the amount of the gas going into the connecting gap, which further reduces the possibility of the gas going into the gap between the heating chamber 1 and the inner box 3.
In order to increase the homogeneity of heating from the heating component 2 to the cavity 11, as illustrated in
After the evaporation is finished and before the cleaning operation, it is possible to rapidly cool the heating device through a cooling device to save the waiting time and increase efficiency. As an example, a cooling pipe 6 is wound on an exterior surface of the heating chamber 1 as illustrated in
As an example, in order to detect the heating temperature of the organic material, a temperature sensor 7 is arranged inside the cavity 11 of the heating chamber 1 as illustrated in
When a constant heating time is given, an evaporating thickness depends on a flow rate of the vapor in the outlet of the nozzle 41. The larger is the flow rate of the vapor in the outlet of the nozzle 41, the thicker is the evaporating thickness. Thus, to control the evaporating thickness, the rate of the vapor at the outlet of the nozzle 41 is monitored. As an example, a vapor flow rate detection device is disposed at the outlet of the nozzle 41 as illustrated in
The embodiment of the invention further provides an evaporation machine comprising the heating device for an evaporation machine of any of above embodiments.
As the heating device used in the embodiment of the invention is the same with that of above embodiments, the two devices can solve same technical problems and achieve a same expecting result.
As an example, the evaporation machine further comprises a housing 9 and a transporting device 91 arranged in the housing 9 as illustrated in
The transporting device 91 is for example a conveyer belt. When the substrate 92 is transported to a position opposite to the nozzle 41, the nozzle 41 sprays the gaseous organic material to allow the organic material adhered to the substrate 92, thereby realizing the evaporating operation. A mask plate 93 is for example arranged on the substrate.
What is described above is related to the illustrative embodiments of the disclosure only and not limitative to the scope of the disclosure; the scopes of the disclosure are defined by the accompanying claims.
The present application claims priority from Chinese Application No. 201510568427.6, filed on Sep. 8, 2015, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 201510568427.6 | Sep 2015 | CN | national |
