IDTECHEX says a major new market could lie in the development of barrier layers for flexible electronics.
For flexible devices, displays and photovoltaics to be commercially viable, they must be robust enough to survive their use. This robustness has thus far eluded many flexible, organic or printable electronics.
As such, beyond simple flexibility, printability, or functionality, the materials out of which these electronic devices are constructed will be one of the most important factors behind the success of flexible electronics.
Key to this robustness will be the encapsulation of the electronics in these devices. Since many of the materials used in printed or organic electronic displays are chemically sensitive, they must be encapsulated to isolate them from environmental components like oxygen and moisture.
Currently materials used to encapsulated electronics include glass and metal, which are rigid. Plastic substrates or transparent flexible encapsulation barriers, while an option, often offer little protection against oxygen and water, allowing the devices to rapidly degrade.
According to IDTechEx In order to achieve device lifetimes of tens of thousands of hours, water vapor transmission rates (WVTR) must be 10-6 g/m2/day, and oxygen transmission rates (OTR) must be < 10-3 cm3/m2/day.
For Organic Photovoltaics, the required WVTR is not as stringent as OLEDs require but is still very high at a level of 10-5 g/m2/day.
These transmission rates are several orders of magnitude smaller than what is possible using any conventional plastic substrate, and they can also be several orders of magnitude smaller than what can be measured using common equipment designed for this purpose.
For these (and other) reasons, there has been intense interest in developing transparent barrier materials with much lower permeabilities, a market that will reach over US$200 million by 2025.
IDTechEx now has a new report which gives an in-depth review of the needs, emerging solutions and players in this space. The report covers a range of approaches in encapsulation, such as dyads, deposition of inorganic layers on plastic substrates, and flexible glass.
It also looks at how surface smoothness and defects such as cracks and pinholes would affect the barrier performance, as well as the next generation of permeability measurement methods and equipment required for devices like organic photovoltaics and OLED.