Thin film moisture barriers protect flexible OLED displays
According to recent industry news, smartphone market leaders, such as Apple, Samsung and LG, are planning to adopt ALD-based thin film encapsulation solutions for flexible AMOLED displays. Details of the plans have not been confirmed, but this is nevertheless exiting news for the whole ALD community. It shows the potential of atomic layer deposition in addressing consumer product challenges and means a huge leap forward in the addressable market size of ALD.
Ultimate OLED encapsulation with ultrafast spatial ALD
When the consumer electronics industry moves towards flexible solutions, encapsulation of flexible OLED displays against moisture permeation is one of the most difficult challenges. Totally conformal and pinhole-free ALD barrier films are ideal for ensuring a long lifetime for flexible OLEDs. They provide better barriers than traditional thick CVD solutions and much thinner coatings than the complex multi-layer PECVD barrier film alternatives.
But the coating quality of ALD thin films has actually never been the point of concern – the high encapsulation performance is widely accepted. The question in the consumer electronics business has been whether ALD can be productive enough. What has now changed?
The advances in low temperature plasma ALD processing and spatial ALD as a means to increase the equipment productivity have transformed ALD-based barrier coatings from a research topic to a viable encapsulation alternative in mass production. The high capacity of the latest spatial ALD solutions has brought the cost of ownership of ALD to acceptable levels also for consumer electronics applications.
Come and see ALD-based encapsulation in action!
The time of ALD-based OLED encapsulation in mass production is getting closer. This is the paradigm change Beneq has been gearing up for many years. We are happy to see that our focus on high-capacity ALD solutions for industrial applications has been the right choice. In particular, our spatial sheet-to-sheet ALD solutions and roll-to-roll ALD equipment are in a unique position to support the growth of ALD encapsulation.
We invite everybody interested in the future of OLED barrier films and high-speed industrial ALD solutions to pay us a visit in our spatial ALD laboratory. You can contact us at any time for a personal tour at the factory. At Beneq, high-capacity low-cost ALD encapsulation is already happening. Manufacturing of smartphones is only one area where this brings about a major change.