Businesses invest €5.6 million to develop rollable glass technologies for OLEDs

Three German companies have announced a three-year project designed to evolve ultra-thin glass substrates and barrier materials for flexible electronics applications – including OLED encapsulation and deposition.

Konfekt is aiming to open OLED and other flexible electronics applications for Schott ultrathin glass – Source: Von Ardenne

Named Konfekt the initiative will have two main goals.

The first will see Schott collaborate with Tesa. This will seem them develop Tesa’s DrySeal liner to work as a barrier adhesive tape 10µ-thick giving hermetic encapsulation for electronics deposited on Schott rollable ultra-thin glass. If this can be perfected conformable OLED displays with a reasonable life time could be delivered, behind Schott’s glass, which itself can be just 25µ thick.

The second Konfekt sub-project will see Von Ardenne employing its expertise in manufacturing vacuum deposition equipment to develop a roll-to-roll coating system for the ultrathin glass.

If successful this element will allow the Schott glass to become a functional substrate for flexible electronic devices by accepting deposition of materials like indium tin oxide (ITO).

The members have committed a total of €5.6 million to this tri-partite development accord.

By John Nelson, follow John on Google+

Businesses invest €5.6 million to develop rollable glass technologies for OLEDs

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