Flexible OLED Manufacturing

Summary

This chapter focuses on the manufacturing of flexible organic light‐emitting diode (OLED) displays for small‐ and medium‐sized panels for smartphone and smartwatch devices. It also focuses on the materials and fabrication process of small‐ and medium‐sized flexible OLEDs that are currently used in display industry. The chapter describes the flexible OLED process and reflects what is being used in the current products, regarded as the first generation flexible OLED. It summarizes the overall fabrication flow for current F‐OLED final module. The major differences between the manufacturing of rigid and of flexible OLEDs are related to substrate handling and encapsulation technologies. The essence of foldable smartphones is the use of a foldable OLED display, which is an extension of flexible OLED technologies. OLED panel encapsulation, or barrier layer performance, plays an important role in the device lifetime and reliability.