Flexible OLEDs

One of the significant advantages of OLEDs is that they can be fabricated on flexible substrates. The use of flexible substrates instead of conventional glass substrates can significantly reduce the thickness and weight of displays and lighting. In addition, flexible OLEDs bring about additional attractive features from the product design point of view, because flexible OLEDs can provide such unique designs as curved, bent, folded, rolled, and ultimately flexible. Moreover, use of flexible substrates has great potential of production innovation such as utilization of roll‐to‐roll (R2R) process with low mass‐production cost. As the candidates for flexible substrates, ultra‐thin glasses, stainless steel foils and plastic films are well known. This chapter describes current status and future potential of three types of flexible substrates and their applications to flexible OLED displays and lightings.