Patent ID: 7250316

Claim:
A method of manufacturing a liquid crystal display device, comprising: forming a gate electrode in a pixel unit and a pad in a pad unit on a first substrate; depositing a gate insulating layer, a semiconductor layer, a metal layer, and a passivation layer over the first substrate; depositing a photoresist layer over the passivation layer; irradiating light onto the first substrate through a mask having a transmissive region, a half-transmissive region, a diffractive region and an interceptive region and developing the photoresist layer to form a photoresist pattern having at least three different thicknesses; first etching the gate insulating layer, the semiconductor layer, the metal layer, and the passivation layer over the pad to open the pad; first ashing the photoresist pattern and second etching the passivation layer and metal layer in the pad and pixel units; second ashing the photoresist pattern and third etching the passivation layer over the gate electrode; fourth etching the metal layer and a part of the semiconductor layer over the gate electrode to form source and drain electrodes; and forming a pixel electrode.