Transforming the Idea of Ultra-Thin Glass into a Reality

tesa is developing new bonding technologies for KONFEKT, an innovative industry research consortium for flexible electronics.

Imagine a smartphone that folds up like a wallet to fit in your pocket, but opens up to reveal a tablet-sized screen. Sound like something you might see in a science fiction movie? Glassmakers are already manufacturing bendable ultra-thin glass and they say foldable glass is just around the corner. With a minimal thickness of 25 micrometers ultra-thin glass is thinner than a single human hair, and in ultra-thin thicknesses of less than 150 micrometers, this glass has proven to be bendable yet stable. Due to its measure of flexibility, the glass can be wrapped onto rolls.

Compared to other substrate materials such as plastics, metals, or silicon, ultra-thin glass offers some serious advantages, including superior optical quality, mechanical resistance, chemical consistency, and temperature stability.

In order to develop new technologies for the use of glass on roll in organic electronics, tesa joined together with other development partners the consortial project KONFEKT, with initial emphasis on the production of future generations of OLED applications.

The collaborative development project KONFEKT (thin glass for glass-polymer laminates) is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research by a total investment of €5.6 million and will run through 2018. The main goal is to deliver a glass on roll, which meets the highest possible quality standards, in order to achieve a robust and very resistant glass on roll that maintains its functional surface area through coating and laminating processes. Therefore, the participating partners tesa SE, SCHOTT, VON ARDENNE and Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP are focusing on the optimisation of avoiding any breakage of the ultra-thin glass while rolling or processing.

Within the research consortium, the four partners are focusing on two features of thin glass: The first feature is the development of a laminate made of ultra-thin glass with a barrier adhesive tape which will serve as a hermetic encapsulation of electronic components. The second feature will center on ways that ultra-thin glass can serve as a functional substrate for demanding applications, such as components for organic electronics.

First results of the project were already introduced by the partners at Vision Flexible Glass, an international technology and networking event in April 2017 at Fraunhofer FEP in Dresden, Germany.

tesa and SCHOTT are developing in the first subproject a flexible glass that enables an encapsulation of sensitive material and strengthens the improvement of roll-to-roll (R2R) processes. At the same time, VON ARDENNE is developing a vacuum coating system specifically for the roll-to-roll coating of flexible glass. The process development regarding deposition of functional layers with this innovative system is driven by Fraunhofer FEP.