There is headway being made by flexible displays in the consumer market, as OLED technology is gaining in acceptance. This success is being partially driven by new technologies from materials manufacturers.
 
In September, SmartKem Ltd. announced agreements with two leading Asian display manufacturers. The goal is to transfer SmartKem’s tru-FLEX organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) semiconductor technology into production lines upon establishing process capability. Michael Cowin, head of strategic marketing, SmartKem Ltd., said that is indicative of the transformation of the display market.
 
“The display industry is undergoing a metamorphosis from a world of rigid inorganic materials to amenable flexible organic materials,” Cowin noted. “This can be seen in the continued evolution of OLED frontplanes, the increased interest in plastic substrates and in the adoption of organic thin-film transistor backplanes.”
 
Cowin said that the required catalyst for the commercialization of next generation display applications will be significant improvements in three core areas: foldability, reduced production costs and improved power consumption.
 
“While SmartKem’s tru-FLEX semiconductors offer the only route to foldable displays – a key value-add in the user experience – our ultra-low TFT ‘off currents’ also enable mobile and wearable displays to consume up to 90% less power than competitor technologies such as low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS), offering significantly extended battery life operation, an urgent and pressing requirement in the smartwatch sector, for instance,” he added.
 
Cowin reported that SmartKem’s organic semiconductor materials offer cost advantages.
 
“Our new agreements in Asia offer manufacturers a drastically reduced cost of production over inorganic materials, even for a greenfield OTFT production line,” he said. “However adoption onto a re-purposed, often fully depreciated amorphous silicon (a-Si) line coupled with the cost savings through increased throughput solution based sheet-to-sheet production, at room temperature and onto low cost plastic substrates is a highly compelling cost down opportunity for display makers. This allows the manufacture of highly differentiated products at increased margins in an industry where margins are very often hard won.”
 
SmartKem is currently at pre-production and pilot line stages with its new partners, with targeted markets including foldable mobile devices, fully conformal smartwatches and embedded commercial display applications. To meet increased demand, the company recently expanded its Manchester, UK manufacturing site by 5,000 square feet.
 
Cowin added that SmartKem often prototypes potential customer TFT-based products, as it speeds up the validation process prior to pilot or pre-production development and technology transfer.That has helped the company overcome one of its major challenges.
 
“When a new technology such as tru-FLEX offers such a significant step-change in performance, customers want to believe, but often need to see hard evidence,” he noted. “In the early days, to eliminate any doubts, SmartKem routinely ran live demonstrations or offered free issue transistor arrays for customers to see for themselves the exceptional electrical and physical performance of our transistor platform.
 
“A final hurdle has been timing, and recognizing where the adoption process would best align to allow a low cost and low risk route to market for the display maker within the existing production supply chain,” he added. “The migration of display manufacturing from low mobility a-Si to high mobility LTPS for high resolution displays has offered a very convenient and timely window of opportunity for SmartKem. The adoption of our technology onto existing fully depreciated a-Si production systems with minimal capital expenditure has been a key driver in pushing the tru-FLEX semiconductor platform into full scale adoption.”
 
All in all, Cowin sees opportunities for flexible displays in the near future.
 
“SmartKem and indeed many product design companies believe flexible displays will change everything,” he said. “As we move towards the age of Big Data, the Cloud and the Internet of Things, the ease by which people see, touch and interact with data will become ever more important. SmartKem’s platform technology, although initially being adopted for driving flexible displays, also has significant traction in the arena of touch and sensor-based applications.
 
“Having such a versatile electronic platform that is unbreakable, highly conformal, lightweight and low power opens the door to a new world of applications, be they consumer, industrial or automotive,” he concluded. “Being able to wear or carry technology with complete comfort or to embed displays, touchscreens or sensors into nearly any conceivable space, shape or surface offers a glimpse into an intriguing future of ergonomically designed technology or ‘ergotechnology,’ where flexible electronics and displays finally conform with ease to the human form and the world we live in.”