A Computational Framework on Pinhole Damage in Ultrathin Barriers for Flexible Electronics Encapsulation

This study investigates pinhole defects in nanometer thin barriers such as atomic layer deposited inorganic films encapsulating flexible organic electronics. The pinhole size and densities are correlated with barrier quality in terms of water vapor transmission rates. The proposed computational framework validated with experiments enables simulation of high aspect, i.e. two hundred, and thickness, i.e. four thousand, ratios between ultrathin inorganic film - organic polymer substrate as an interim step to designate the barrier hermeticity and thus the lifetime of compliant electronics.