FOLED technology offers novel performance features that may enable a variety of new product opportunities in displays, lighting and beyond.
Thinner and lighter weight – Built on very thin plastic or metallic foil, FOLEDs can be much thinner and lighter than backlit LCD’s and other displays in the market today. So cell phones, portable computers, wall-mounted televisions and other products with displays, can also be lighter and smaller. Plus, FOLED technology may allow easier installation of white OLED lighting tiles in more settings, and create novel uses in architecture that are not possible with today’s fluorescent and incandescent lights.
R. Ma from Universal Display Corporation says we have chosen thin metal foils as the substrates for flexible displays because of their excellent thermal, mechanical and permeation barrier properties and good flexibility. Metal foils as thin as 25 mm have been used and planarization process has been developed. Another key challenge is to develop a flexible thin film permeation barrier. OLEDs degrade as a result of exposure to atmospheric oxygen and water. Working with Professor Wagner’s team at Princeton University, we have identified a flexible, highly impermeable barrier layer that is deposited from environmentally-friendly and inexpensive precursors in a single-chamber reactor. The lifetime of OLEDs encapsulated with the layers exceeds the industrial target of 1,000 hours and also the lifetime of conventionally sealed glass packaged OLEDs. Many materials are used in a flexible AMOLED: organic, inorganic and metallic systems. We have studied the characteristics of such materials and developed an initial system to study the mechanical flexibility of the integrated device. We will present the required material building block properties and present recent results on ultra-thin (< 50 micrometer) flexible OLED displays. Flexibility results on these displays show that they operate when conformed to a tight diameter of only 5 mm. Source
