ALD for H2O and O2 Barriers for Flexible OLEDs

Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) has been widely studied for water permeation barriers for flexible OLED displays. Inorganic films of approximately 100nm have been demonstrated to reduce the water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) to 6e-7 g/m^2/d at room temperature. However, these films crack at less than 2% strain. Inorganic ALD films cannot withstand the required 5% strain until their thickness is reduced to 5nm at which point the WVTR becomes unacceptably high. Hybrid inorganic/organic ALD films have demonstrated enhanced strain resilence but few chemistries have thus far been studied, and their optimized WVTR and mechanical flexibility have yet to be determined. We propose to investigate several classes of new precursor chemicals to generate hybrid inorganic/organic films to assess their applicability for encapsulating flexible OLED displays. Once the best chemistry has been identified and optimized, we will leverage our companies history of successful scaling to commercial manufacturing of ALD processes.