Patent ID: 8709161

Claim:
A thin film deposition apparatus to form a thin film on a substrate, the apparatus comprising thin film deposition assemblies, each of which comprises: a deposition source configured to discharge a deposition material; a deposition source nozzle unit that is disposed on the deposition source, the deposition source nozzle unit comprising deposition source nozzles that are spaced apart in a first direction; a patterning slit sheet that is disposed facing the deposition source nozzle unit, the patterning slit sheet having patterning slits that are spaced apart in the first direction to form a row of the patterning slits; and a barrier plate assembly that is disposed between the deposition source nozzle unit and the patterning slit sheet, the barrier plate assembly being separated from the deposition source nozzle unit, being configured to have lower temperature than the deposition source while the thin film is being formed, and comprising barrier plates that are spaced apart in the first direction and partition a space between the deposition source nozzle unit and the patterning slit sheet into sub-deposition spaces, the barrier plates being spaced between respective pairs of adjacent deposition source nozzles of the deposition source nozzles such that the sub-deposition spaces correspond to respective ones of the deposition source nozzles, the thin film deposition assembly configured to pass the deposition material through each of the sub-deposition spaces, wherein the thin film deposition apparatus and the substrate are spaced apart, and one of the thin film deposition apparatus and the substrate is movable relative to the other, wherein the thin film deposition assemblies are spaced apart in a second direction perpendicular to the first direction such that the rows of the patterning slits of the thin film deposition assemblies are spaced apart from one another in the second direction, and wherein the thin film deposition apparatus is configured to concurrently pattern the deposition materials from the respective deposition sources on the substrate through the patterning slits of the respective rows of the patterning slits, the respective patterning slit sheets being smaller than the substrate in at least one of the first direction or the second direction.