Vertical Divider
Musing Technology
Lowering The Barrier For Entering The Stretchable OLED Display Market
March 08, 2020
“Traditional intrinsically stretchable OLEDs have commercial limitations due to their low efficiency in the electrical conductivity of the electrodes,” according to KAIST. “In addition, previous geometrically stretchable OLEDs laminated to the elastic substrates with thin film devices lead to different pixel emissions of the devices from different peak sizes of the buckles.” To side-step these issues, there are actually two substrates. The upper substrate starts off rigid and is carved away leaving each pixel as a rigid island connected to its neighbors by strictures thin and curved enough to be flexible. All of this is connected to and supported by the underlying stretchy substrate using elastic micro-pillars – so a patterned upper substrate with bridges makes the rigid substrate stretchable, while the pillars decentralize the stress on the device. “Although various applications using micro-pillar arrays have been reported, it has not yet been reported how elastic pillar arrays can affect substrates by relieving the stress applied to those substrates upon stretching,” said KAIST. “Compared to results using similar layouts with conventional free-standing, flat substrates or island structures, their [the team’s] results with elastic pillar arrays show relatively low stress levels at both the bridges and plates when stretching the devices.”
The result is small stretchable red-green-blue) OLED display, with the OLEDs patterned by thermal evaporation fabrication onto stress-relief substrates.
“Our substrate design will impart flexibility into electronics technology development including semiconductor and circuit technologies.
The work is published in Nano Letters as ‘Two-dimensionally stretchable organic light-emitting diode with elastic pillar arrays for stress relief
Lowering The Barrier For Entering The Stretchable OLED Display Market
March 08, 2020
“Traditional intrinsically stretchable OLEDs have commercial limitations due to their low efficiency in the electrical conductivity of the electrodes,” according to KAIST. “In addition, previous geometrically stretchable OLEDs laminated to the elastic substrates with thin film devices lead to different pixel emissions of the devices from different peak sizes of the buckles.” To side-step these issues, there are actually two substrates. The upper substrate starts off rigid and is carved away leaving each pixel as a rigid island connected to its neighbors by strictures thin and curved enough to be flexible. All of this is connected to and supported by the underlying stretchy substrate using elastic micro-pillars – so a patterned upper substrate with bridges makes the rigid substrate stretchable, while the pillars decentralize the stress on the device. “Although various applications using micro-pillar arrays have been reported, it has not yet been reported how elastic pillar arrays can affect substrates by relieving the stress applied to those substrates upon stretching,” said KAIST. “Compared to results using similar layouts with conventional free-standing, flat substrates or island structures, their [the team’s] results with elastic pillar arrays show relatively low stress levels at both the bridges and plates when stretching the devices.”
The result is small stretchable red-green-blue) OLED display, with the OLEDs patterned by thermal evaporation fabrication onto stress-relief substrates.
“Our substrate design will impart flexibility into electronics technology development including semiconductor and circuit technologies.
The work is published in Nano Letters as ‘Two-dimensionally stretchable organic light-emitting diode with elastic pillar arrays for stress relief
Contact Us
|
Barry Young
|