Manufacturing progress key to flexible electronics' success
Tom Cheyney, Small Times, May 2007
As the first commercial flexible electronics reach consumers, many significant manufacturing and technological obstacles must be overcome for the market to reach its multi-billion-dollar potential over the next five to ten years.
For the emerging flexible thin-film, organic, and printed electronics markets to flourish, most industry professionals agree that roll-to-roll (R2R) processing must be implemented on the factory floor. Indeed, thin-film photovoltaics, OLEDs, and RFIDs are already in pilot or volume production using R2R techniques.
But for the manufacturing of large-area and conformable displays, paper like e-books, and high-performance solid-state lighting to take place, it remains an open question whether inkjet, thermal laser imaging, or other printing technologies; optical, imprint, or digital lithography; adapted semiconductor and LCD processing methods; inorganic or organic material; or a combination of the various methodologies and chemistries will be leveraged into successful, scalable R2R approaches.
“Surface roughness is still an issue with flex and is not good enough for making transistors,” explains Bob Street, senior research fellow at Palo Alto Research Center. The roughness average needs to be a few angstroms, but that plastic substrates remain “five to ten times rougher than glass.” Pointing out the susceptibility of flexible substrates to scratching, Street says the plastics people “need to learn how to improve quality.”
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