RECENT ADVANCES

Universal Display is actively engaged in research and development to bring exciting FOLED™ technology to market. Supported, in part, by funding from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), we demonstrated the world’s first high-resolution AMOLED built on flexible metal foil using amorphous-Silicon (a-Si) backplane technology at the 2007 Society for Information Display Conference and Symposium in Long Beach, California. Described below, this flexible metal foil prototype, with its extremely thin, lightweight and rugged form factor, represents a major step toward demonstrating the commercial viability of such products. View a video.

FOLED Display Format
Featuring crisp, full-color video images, this 4” QVGA display combines LG Display's innovative a-Si backplane technology — adapted to metal foil — with Universal Display’s proprietary high-efficiency PHOLED™ and FOLED® flexible technologies. The display prototype is a portrait-configured, 100 ppi full-color OLED display and offers 256 grey scale levels per color (8 bit).

Flexible Substrates
A variety of flexible polymeric materials have been evaluated for FOLED use; however, the development of barrier coatings for these substrates and better film properties, such as thermal stability (for the fabrication of high-temperature TFTs), are still required. To enable an alternative, Universal Display has been a leader in developing FOLEDs on flexible metallic foil. Metallic foil features excellent barrier properties, good thermal/ dimensional stability for TFT backplane integration, and cost-effectiveness. The ultra-thin display described here was built on 76 micron thick metal foil (0.076 mm).

FOLED Packaging and Encapsulation
Glass-based OLEDs are conventionally protected from the effects of water and oxygen with a glass lid and ultraviolet-cured epoxy resin. Flexible OLED packaging is much more challenging, however, especially where conformability or flexibility is key. Universal Display is working on approaches that may provide the necessary protective properties. This prototype was encapsulated by Vitex Systems using a monolithic, multi-layer coating and then laminated with a system developed by National Starch Corporation and Universal Display.