Summary

このレポートはフレキシブルエレクトロニクスや有機エレクトロニクスで使われるバリア膜と薄膜封止の市場を調査し、2029年までの市場や技術について分析しています。

Report Details

• Multilayer barrier (MLB) films: Many companies are developing a variant of this approach in which multiple pairs of inorganic-organic materials are deposited. These companies differ in terms of the materials they have chosen, the processes they have developed and the production and commercial readiness levels they have reached. Many such companies have had to pioneer solutions to overcome the considerable challenges in R2R production of MLB films. MLB films are today in a challenging market spot: displays, for now, have switched to inline whereas other target markets are still in the making. Some consider that they might go obsolete before ever seeing market daylight. We, however, asses that the future remains attractive, particularly as low-cost and large-area solutions.

• Inline thin film encapsulation: This is an evolution of the MLB approach. Here, the multilayer is formed inline directly and conformally over the device. As such, there is no additional substrate and adhesive, leading to thin devices. Here, the challenge is lowering TACT time and boosting yield. The latter is key because defects waste not just the film, but the entire device. Inline TFE is already commercial since around 2014 on rigid plastic displays. It is however now preparing to enable the transition to flexible/bendable devices. To do this, the materials and processes have had to evolve, reducing layer numbers, improving film quality, and minimising built-in stress. These evolutions must continue to reduce bending radius, to migrate to larger devices, and to accept direct in-cell touch layers.

• Atomic layer deposition: Temporal batch ALD already yields single inorganic layers whose intrinsic WVTR exceeding requirements. These processes are however slow and unproductive since half-cycles are time separated. Today, many are developing roll-to-roll spatial ALD in which half cycles are separated in space. These promise to yield high performance thin films without compromising TACT time. This is a developing technology frontier where multiple pioneering challenges with machine and process designs are yet to be overcome. Despite this, s-ALD will remain a strong technology contender either as a hybrid in an MLB structure or as a stand-alone layer.

• Flexible glass: This technology promises excellent barrier performance, high temperature processing and chemical stability. It is however not as flexible as others and remains difficult to handle given that it can shatter, a major problem in vacuum systems. Significant progress is however being made in terms of supressing stress and improving handling. Questions about final cost and volume availability also still hang over this technology which was first introduced to the market almost a decade ago. Despite this, our assessment is that patient development with a long-term strategy will ultimately bring major success, positioning flexible glass as a high-performance substrate-and-barrier-in-one choice.

• Quantum dot displays: Quantum dot (QD) enhancement films are a commercial success. Their main competitor- edge optic QD- is basically obsolete. In addition, a transition away from toxic Cd based QDs has taken place, thus lifting the legislative cloud of uncertainty from over the industry.

• OLED lighting: The challenges facing OLED lighting are significant: large area, high brightness and long life organic devices with low defect tolerance. Furthermore, its rival technology, inorganic LEDs, arrived first and established a challenging price and performance market reference. Despite this OLED lighting is still making progress. Its scale up, in sheet-to-sheet (S2S) evaporated production, has reached Gen5 level. Factory investment in wide-format R2R production has also been made some years ago.

• Others: There are several other applications of flexible barrier films including other flexible photovoltaics such as CIGS and flexible electrophoretic displays. These applications have very different requirements to displays and lighting, and such as such will require different barrier solutions. Read our report to learn about the status of these applications and understand barrier uses/trends.

The market for barrier films and inline thin film encapsulation split by end user market. Here we show the market M sqm. Note that the shape of the figure, i.e. the relative contribution of each application, will look very different if the figure is in SM, reflecting the wide difference is barrier costs per sqm depending on applications. The exact values are contained in the report. Further note that the order in which the legend is presented here does not correspond sequentially to the chart.

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