Flexible display panel products or listed on the market during the year: very soft and innovative

Although about ten years ago, flexible displays have become regular visitors to electronic products and technology exhibitions, but today we have never seen real products in the shop windows. However, this time it really has to come: Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute has authorized display and electronic paper manufacturer AU Optronics to use their new technology, this year may have flexible display panel products to market this year.

“This new technology from the ITRI may change the world” – this is an assessment made by an independent jury panel invited by The Wall Street Journal.

This new technology, called "Flexible Multi-Purpose Flexible Electronic Substrate Displays," or FlexUPD for short, has won two consecutive awards in R&D 100's R&D 100 and the Wall Street Journal's Gold Award for technological innovation in the past four months. These two awards are only given to the most innovative and groundbreaking inventions in the world. Effectively and cost-effectively improving the production efficiency of flexible display panels, it is clear that these two conditions can be met.

Although several current flexible display panel production technologies have their own characteristics, they also have some similarities. For example, they all need to bond a flexible substrate to a hard and flat hard base, and then layer on a flexible substrate. The electronic components and various panels are fabricated and placed, and the completed flexible display panel is removed from the base after the wiring is completed. The reason for doing this is because in the process of manufacturing the delicate display component, the position and flatness of the flexible substrate need to be accurately fixed, and the error can only be calculated in micrometers so that the electronic components do not misalign.

This requires the flexible substrate to be firmly bonded to the base; and the process of tearing the flexible display panel off the base after the fabrication is completed requires that the substrate be easily detached from the base. This paradoxical requirement is difficult to achieve. There will often be slight distortions when stripping the flexible panel, causing misalignment of the electronic component lines, lowering the yield rate, and the single-piece cost will soar.

Flexible displays certainly will change the world, but more mature technologies are needed.

There have been some solutions to this problem in the past. For example, a thin film is vacuum deposited on a hard base, substrates and components are placed on the thin film, and finally the films are peeled off together; or an entire hard base is evaporated from the sides with a laser to facilitate peeling and the like. However, these methods either take a long time or are easily damaged, and thus have not been widely used for commercialization. In contrast, FlexUPD technology is much more convenient.

Li Zhengzhong and Li Zongming of the Industrial Research Institute have been inspired by the process of making cakes, “as if adding a layer of easy-to-tear intermediate material between the moist cake and the baking sheet, so that the moist cake can be smoothly removed from the baking pan without being damaged”. An ITRI spokesman said. The moist cake is a thin, paper-like pancake in Taiwan.

The cake is very thin, and the craftsman will skillfully apply the soft dough on the hot plate and shape it instantly. The moist cake will not stick to the pan and can be quickly removed. In addition to the material itself, the other key is the producer in the furnace. A layer of oil is applied before the dough is applied on the board. Li Zongming, head of the Institute of Materials and Chemistry, believes that the process of soft electronic substrate processing will imitate this process.

FlexUPD meets the contradictory requirements for the production of flexible displays by adding a layer of special material called a "departure layer" to the production process. At the time of production, the release layer fixes the flexible substrate and the base by adhesive so as to facilitate accurate alignment in production; and after all the processes are completed, only a simple cutting process is required, and the flexible panel and the base can be easily put. separate. In the production process of the flexible display panel, the effect of the release layer is similar to that of a paper cup.

In a display panel production line using the FlexUPD technology, a layer of release layer slightly larger than the surface area of ​​the panel is formed on the hard substrate by vacuum evaporation or screen printing. Usually poly-p-xylylene is used. raw material. Then apply an adhesive such as epoxy on the release layer and apply a larger area than the release layer. A flexible substrate can then be placed on the adhesive to enter the traditional semiconductor process until power and signal lines are connected.

After the production is completed, it will enter the cutting process. Simply cutting along the edge of the release layer, the entire flexible display panel can be easily removed from the base. Hard bases, release liners, adhesives, and flexible substrates are available in a variety of material options. The peeled-off flexible display panel may be bonded to, or separated from, the release layer; The agent can be gasified using a laser.

The focus of this technology is on finding and developing materials with the best performance, not only to withstand high temperatures and various chemicals in the semiconductor device production process, but also to have sufficient strength, sufficient flexibility, and high light transmittance. . Starting in 2006, the research and development process took researchers more than four years to solve a number of problems and applied for more than one hundred patents. The final results were quite satisfactory. "This flexible display technology provides a simple solution to the process," said William Webb, one of the judges of the Wall Street Journal and chairman of the Science and Communications Resources of the UK Communications Commission.

In addition to significantly increasing the yield of flexible display panels, FlexUPD technology has an attractive feature: traditional display panel manufacturers can use this technology without purchasing additional equipment. It can be used not only for flexible liquid crystal panels, but also for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display panels and electronic paper panels.

Flexible displays have many advantages over traditional displays: they are lighter in area and less likely to be damaged.

In a recent demonstration, we have seen the use of this technology to produce flexible thin TFT LCD panels, using a polyimide substrate, a thickness of only 0.1 mm, bending radius can be less than 5 cm, can experience 10,000 times Bending without damage.

It seems that scrolling PDAs or e-book readers are no longer distant, and large-format wall-mounted flexible displays will soon become a reality.

AU Optronics, a maker of LCD panels, has been authorized by the ITRI to begin designing and manufacturing flexible display panels. AU Optronics has acquired SiPix, an American e-paper technology developer and manufacturer, in March of last year, and has included its patented “micro-cup” technology.

Judging from AUO's recent performance, we suspect that the flexible display device that will be visible before 2011 is likely to be a refreshing e-book reader; There is no better IT product than it is used to welcome the New Year. Maybe we can roll it up or fold it up like an ordinary newspaper.

Maybe in just a few months you can see a monitor that is as thin as a piece of paper. Will FlexUPD redefine books, television, and even paper?

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