| 摘要 |
A process for fabricating a face plate for a flat panel display such as a field emission cathode type display, the face plate having integral spacer support structures is disclosed. Also disclosed is a product made by the aforesaid process. The support structures are designed to be load bearing so as to prevent implosion of a planar, transparent face plate toward a parallel spaced-apart base plate when the space between the face plate and the base plate is sealed at the edges of the display to form a chamber, and the chamber is evacuated in the presence of atmospheric pressure outside the chamber. Unlike most spacer support structures proposed for such flat panel displays, the support structures are made from the same material as the substrate from which the face plate is fabricated. For a preferred embodiment of the process, a perforated laminar template is sealably sandwiched between a laminar silicate glass substrate and a manifold block to form a temporary sandwich assembly. The laminar template, preferably formed from a refractory ceramic or graphite material, is perforated with mold holes which are perpendicular to the major planar faces thereof, each hole corresponding to the desired location of a spacer support structure on the substrate. The manifold block has a plurality of mating ports, each such port mating with a major surface of the laminar template, and aligning with at least one mold hole of the template. Each of the mating ports is connected to a main vacuum port via a manifold formed from interconnecting grooves or passageways. After the substrate is heated evenly within a temperature range where the viscosity of the substrate material is greatly reduced, such that the material becomes plastic and readily flowable under pressure, pressure within the mold holes is reduced with respect to ambient pressure. The pressure differential causes the plastic substrate material will flow into the mold holes of the template.
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