OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status - Page 7

SAES Group co-authors the newly issued book Organic and Printed Electronics - Fundamentals and Applications, edited by G. Nisato, D. Lupo and S. Ganz. SAES is member of the Organic and Printed Electronics Association (OE-A) and its Dr Paolo Vacca, head of Materials Chemistry Lab at SAES Group R&D, co-authored chapter 9 of the book.

Passive encapsulation technologies for Organic Electronics do not guarantee full hermeticity across the sealing materials. A suitable combination of SAES Active Adhesives & Getters represents the most efficient way for the lifetime insurance in Organic Electronics.

The UK-based Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) recently installed a new roll to roll (R2R) slot die/screen printing and encapsulation line that can be used to print, coat and pattern a range of organic and in-organic solution based coatings.

The new line can assist researchers with development towards commercialization of a host of printable electronics applications - including photovoltaics, OTFT and printed batteries. The system was custom-built by VDL, and it consists of two pieces of equipment - a roll to roll slot die coating and rotary screen printing and a coating toolset.

Applied Materials' financial results for Q4 2015 were better than expected, and the company also issued a strong guidance going forward. In their display business segment, the company sees accelerated strategic investment from customers - particularly for OLED displays.

In 2015, the company's OLED system bookings reached $150 million. Applied traditionally offered backplane (LTPS and IGZO) deposition systems, and the company recently entered the OLED encapsulation market as well - which is seen as a growth driver for Applied.

According to reports, Samsung is gearing up to introduce their first foldable OLED smartphone device by the end of 2016, as Samsung's mobile phone unit is under pressure to innovate and recapture its lost market share.

According to an interesting report from Korea, Samsung has been collaborating with a KAIST spin-off called Solip Technology that developed a foldable glass that will be used in Samsung's upcoming foldable OLEDs. Samsung is considering placing a strategic investment in Solip as this material is a key technology for Samsung.

OLEDs are nowadays facing the same issues they had since the beginning: basically, OLED materials are extremely sensitive to oxidizing agents and, especially, to moisture. This requires encapsulation materials with exceptionally high barrier properties and active fillers or getters, capable of absorbing water on a single molecule basis. The optimization of many functional properties in single encapsulating materials is a very complex materials science problem. The fact that OLED materials can also be very sensitive to heat or radiations, generates many process constraints as well.

It turns out that encapsulation materials must be specifically engineered taking into account the OLED structure, the device architecture, the chemical and physical nature of the materials and, nevertheless, the specific processes to be applied.

The UK Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and Beneq signed a collaboration agreement to commercialise atomic layer deposition (ALD) technologies for printed electronics applications.

CPI OLED production line

Beneq and the CPI will create an open access environment for companies to develop ultra barrier solutions in areas such as photovoltaics, OLEDs, microelectronics and sensors. The CPI recently installed two ALD deposition tools from Beneq for the development of conformal nano-scale coatings - one batch ALD tool and one state of the art roll-to-roll ALD (R2R ALD) system. In particular the roll-to-roll ALD tool processing technology will be actively developed between the two companies.

IDTechEx released a new report (Barrier Layers for Flexible Electronics 2016-2026: Technologies, Markets, Forecasts) in which they look at the future encapsulation market - the emerging technologies and the application needs.

IDTechEx sees the market for flexible encapsulation layers rising to $850 million in 2026 - mainly from quantum dots enhanced LCDs and flexible OLEDs - and also from flexible photovoltaics.

Applied Materials announced two new PECVD based deposition systems aimed towards the flexible OLED thin-film encapsulation market.

The two new systems are the AKT-20K (925x1500 mm substrates) and the AKT-40K (1250x2200 mm substrates). Both systems offer the ability to deposit diffusion barrier films with very low water and oxygen penetration. These high-performance films are deposited at low temperatures of

3M announced that they entered into a licensing agreement with Lotus Applied Technology, which gives 3M access to Lotus' TransFlexALD spatial Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) and barrier materials patent portfolio.

The TransFlexALD is a roll-to-roll ALD deposition that can be used to make single-layer encapsulation layers suitable for OLED panels (and other devices).

The UK launched a new project called Gravia that aims to investigate the feasibility of producing graphene-based encapsulation films for next generation flexible OLED lighting and display products.

The Gravia project is a 12-month effort, and the partners in the project expect to deliver a feasible material and process system by the project's end. Drawing on the unique properties of graphene, 'Gravia' will aim to achieve barrier materials that are not only flexible, but also transparent, robust, and very impervious to many molecules.