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Inkjet-printing and the Production of Flexible OLED Displays

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Getting flexible

TFE was invented to coat flexible OLED screens with a barrier as solid as glass, but bendable. But it is prone to contamination and other issues.

Traditional TFE processing methods enclose the substrate in a vacuum chamber, where a vapor of the encapsulating film is sprayed onto the substrate through a metal stencil. This process is slow and expensive - primarily because of wasted material - and requires stopping the machine frequently for cleaning.

There are also issues with defects, as the coating that hits the chamber walls and stencil can potentially flake off and fall onto the substrate in between adding layers. But moisture, and even some air particles, can sneak into the chamber, which is deadly to OLEDs: When electricity hits OLEDs contaminated with water and air particles, the resulting chemical reactions reduce the OLEDs’ quality and lifespan.

Any displays contaminated during manufacturing are discarded and, to make up for lost yield, companies boost retail prices. Only two companies now sell OLED television displays, with 55-inch models selling for 3000 to 4000 US-Dollar - about 1000 to 3000 US-Dollar more than their 55-inch LCD and LED counterparts.

YIELDjet FLEX aims to solve many TFE issues. A key innovation is encasing the printer in a nitrogen chamber, cutting exposure to oxygen and moisture, as well as cutting contamination with particles - notorious for diminishing OLED yields - by ten times over current methods that use vacuum chambers. "Low-particle nitrogen is the best low-cost, inert environment you can use for OLED manufacturing," Madigan says.

In its TFE process, the YIELDjet precisely coats organic films over the display area as part of the TFE structure. The organic layer flattens and smoothes the surface to provide ideal conditions for depositing the subsequent layers in the TFE structure. Depositing onto a smooth, clean surface dramatically improves the quality of the TFE structure, enabling high yields and reliability, even after repeated flexing and bending, states Madigan.

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