Flexible Organic Electronics: From Lab to Fab to the Next Wave of Products

Mike Banach, Technical Director

FlexEnable at a glance• Headquarters – Cambridge, UK• World’s most experienced team of plastic electronics engineers with

collective experience of over 700 engineering years, 140 patent families• Lowest cost and most flexible platform for bringing surfaces to life• Focused on mainstream applications – LCD, OLED and sensor arrays for IoT• Proven volume-production technology and experienced tech-transfer team

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Market & Applications

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• OTFT brings access to applications not feasible with other flexible array technologies.

• For applications that require conformability, unbreakability, light-weight:

• Only OLCD can bring large area, long lifetime or high brightness• Only OTFT sensor arrays offer ultra-low leakage and large area

Automotive Displays

Home CE, Wearable Displays

Digital Signage Displays

Fingerprint Sensors

X-RaySensors

A $30Bn end user market opportunity by 2020

Product Companies

Partnering to bring OTFT Technology to displays and sensors

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FlexEnableOTFT platform

Display MakersProduction

Flexible Display means AMOLED, Right?• For super-flexible, foldable displays, AMOLED will eventually be the answer• Automotive needs conformed displays, with radius of curvature down to 3cm• OLCD has significant advantages over AMOLED for conformed automotive requirements

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Automotive Requirement

Flex OLED OLCD

Reliability Still far away OTFT has proven reliability, LCD is dominant in automotive display

Brightness Reliability gets 4 times worse with 2X brightness for automotive targets

Backlight solutions with automotive brightness specs available – no reliability impact

Supply chain Few suppliers Can run on any a:Si line with minimum modifications

Cost Very high Close to glass LCD

Scalability Yield a major issue for large displays OTFT has excellent uniformity and low-temp demount enables nearly 100% demount yield at any size

2015 – Monochrome OLCD video

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2016 – Full color 4.7” OLCD

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2017 – 12.1” Full Color OLCD

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• High yielding, production-proven low-temp process on low cost TAC film• Low CAPEX required to convert a conventional a-Si LCD line to OLCD

OLCD significantly lower cost even when flexible OLED is scaleda-Si LCD line to OLCD conversion

OLCD: Low T drives low cost for flexible displays

2017 2018 2019 2020Tota

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actu

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per Y

ield

Uni

t

4.7" Flex AMOLED

4.7" FlexEnableOLCD Module

4.7" Glass LCDDisplay

Automotive Displays

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Our vehicles were once our cocoons, insulating us from the world outside, but now we demand vehicles that include a host of new experiences and connectivity features.(WIRED)

Macro trends drive demand for conformed and shaped displays

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“With every passing car show, two things become glaringly obvious:

1) fully autonomous and sustainable automobiles aren’t Hollywood pipe dreams anymore, they’re inevitable

2) in anticipation of those same automobiles, interior design and use of space are overtaking exterior design in terms of automaker focus.

Without the distractions of driving-as-we-know-it, our attention will almost be 100% focused on comfort, user interfaces and interior customization.”

(Gear Patrol)

World first: A-pillar display in Yanfeng XiM17 concept car

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FlexEnable 12.1” glass-free, conformable organic liquidcrystal display (OLCD) has been incorporated into acar’s A-pillar to allow for greater visibility and safety.

The demonstrator was included in YFAI’s XiM17autonomous concept interior that made its world debutat the 2017 North American Auto Show (NAIAS)in Detroit.

http://www.yfai.com

Flexible LCD is coming

Source: http://www.j-display.com/english/news/2017/20170125.html

Source: https://technology.ihs.com/588457/display-dynamics-jdi-to-start-mass-production-of-flexible-lcds-in-2018

Source: http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=43719

OLCD vs PI : TAC film is the ideal substrate for flexible LCD

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Property Clear PI TAC

Light Transmission (%) <90% >94%

Birefringence Re (nm) 45 <2

Birefringence Rth (nm) 135 <10

Cost, Supply Chain High Cost, not in MP ~$1/m2, Ubiquitous

• TAC film is an ideal optical substrate for OLCD – very high optical transmission, very low birefringence, very low cost.

• Excellent optical properties of TAC mean that no compensation film is required (unlike colourless PI film)

• Only OTFT enables the use of TAC for Flexible LCD substrates.• Future innovations could have the LCD built directly onto the polarizer

OLCD vs PI : Coat-Debond, versus Mount-Demount

Typical low yield (De) bond process required for high temperature AM

TAC Film TAC Film

FlexEnable high yield (De)mount process used for low temperature OTFT

Low-temp OTFT process enables maximum yield at the most critical release stage

Low T enables low cost, high yield mount/demount

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• Enables unique (non-rectangular) display shapes to be easily cut• High yield process for flex based OLCD and AMOLED displays• Only possible with low-temperature OTFT processing

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OTFT performance now exceeding a-Si

10

1

0.1

0.01

2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 ….. 2020

EPD Focus

Mob

ility

Diverse Applications

In Production

Next Generations

a:Si TFT Mobility

Comparison with other FPD technologies

26th May 2017

• OTFT has lower fundamental off-current than both a-Si and LTPS• True on/off ratio in excess of 109, is better than a-Si• Assumption: linear dependency of OFF current on Vds

1.00E-17

1.00E-16

1.00E-15

1.00E-14

1.00E-13O

FF c

urre

nt @

Vds

= 5

V [A

/um

]

1.00E+06

1.00E+07

1.00E+08

1.00E+09

ON

-OFF

ratio

@ -5

to +

10V

Making very good progress on sensor applications

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Point of sale (PoS) Border control Banking and smartcards

X-ray sensors Mobile devices Wearables

Looking into BioFET applications

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Flexible/Stretchable Substrate

Flexible Organic DielectricFlexible Organic

Semiconductor

Application demands OTFT because:• Devices need to be embedded in body without rejection • Devices need to very flexible and even stretch to form contact with nerves + organs

Ion Sensitive Field Effect Transistor (ISFET)

Summary – taking OTFT from Lab to Fab

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• OTFT is becoming widely recognized as the best technology to enable fully-flexible, low-cost and ubiquitous displays and sensor arrays

• We have in production a mobility >1.5 cm2/ Vs (well beyond a:Si) – and this is continually increasing

• OTFT has already been transferred from Lab to Fab – FlexEnable’stechnology is the only OTFT technology used in display manufacturing, and commercial products, today.

• FlexEnable is very interested in partnering with like minded companies to create a larger ecosystem for flexible electronics.

www.flexenable.cominfo@flexenable.com

@flexenable