AVS 59th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition
    Thin Film Wednesday Sessions
       Session TF-WeM

Invited Paper TF-WeM3
Ultra-barrier Technology for Moisture-Sensitive Electronics

Wednesday, October 31, 2012, 8:40 am, Room 10

Session: Thin Films for Encapsulation, Packaging, and Biomedical Devices
Presenter: P.F. Carcia, DuPont Central Research and Development
Correspondent: Click to Email
Organic materials are driving future electronic technologies in the direction of lighter weight, more robust, flexible, and lower cost manufacturing. Organic solar cells have reached 10% efficiency in the lab and are becoming an attractive low-cost option for generating electricity in isolated regions in the undeveloped world. Organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) are poised to succeed LCDs as the next generation of more vibrant color displays for TVs, computer tablets, and mobile phones. However, one obstacle to the broad utilization of organic electronic materials, and also some inorganic materials, is their sensitivity to atmospheric gases, especially moisture. In the case of OLED displays, hermetic packaging with glass or metal may be an interim solution for early product introduction, but this precludes advantages of lighter weight and flexibility, which could have cost penalties. But for organic photovoltaics (OPV), and for some thin-film inorganic PV technologies, e.g. CIGS, to be cost competitive, they will need to be fabricated with flexible polymer materials, which are permeable. These polymer materials will require low permeation coatings to exclude atmospheric gases that can readily degrade moisture sensitive electronic materials. For OLEDs, the barrier coating must uniformly reduce permeation through the polymer by ~ 106 times for the display to be defect-free. Solar cells will need a similar (104-105 times) reduction in permeation, if they are to have a reasonable outdoor lifetime. In our laboratory, we have discovered that single-layer, inorganic, barrier coatings grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD) can meet the demanding requirements of an ultra-barrier to protect sensitive electronic devices on a flexible polymer substrate. In this talk we will discuss many of the materials and processing insights we have learned about ALD barriers, their performance protecting sensitive electronic devices, and the outlook for practical, high-speed ALD manufacturing.