Flexible OLED, as an important development direction in the semiconductor display field, has attracted more and more attention from the market.
Statistics from the consulting company DSCC show that about 83% of 5G mobile phones released in the terminal market currently use OLED screens, and folding screen phones have become the first choice for 5G flagship models of major terminal manufacturers such as Huawei.
From the perspective of the display panel, the shipments of flexible display panels are also on the rise. In 2019, China's AMOLED panel makers shipped about 56 million units, an increase of 133.5% year-on-year. Global shipments accounted for 12%. BOE ranked second in the world. In the domestic market, BOE's flexible product shipments reached 86.7%. , Maintaining a leading position in the industry.
In 2020, as the country advances the implementation of the "new infrastructure" strategy, my country's 5G commercialization and the construction of the Internet of Things will also speed up, and smart phones as interactive ports will also become indispensable in people's daily lives. Driven by major first-tier manufacturers, flexible OLED products may fully penetrate the LCD and rigid OLED smartphone markets.
So, why are flexible OLEDs so popular? What are its application advantages, and what is its preparation process, this article will explain in detail.
01 Application advantages of flexible display
Flexible display refers to a display technology that uses flexible substrates to prepare ultra-thin, ultra-light, and bendable products. Based on flexible display technology, the mobile phone can be worn on the wrist, the tablet computer can be folded into a small notebook and put in the pocket, and the TV can be freely rolled like a scroll.
AMOLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode) is a self-luminous display device based on organic materials. It is mainly composed of a substrate, a TFT drive array and an OLED light-emitting device (metal cathode + organic light-emitting layer + anode). It has ultra-thin, response speed Fast, wide viewing angle, high contrast and other characteristics, very suitable for flexible display.
When AMOLED uses flexible substrate materials such as polymer plastics or metal foils, it has strong resistance to bending, can realize dynamic bending display, even folding display, and has broad application prospects in smart phones, wearable devices, and vehicles. .
According to the development of flexible display technology, the form of flexible products generally undergoes three development stages: Bendable, Foldable and Rollable.
In recent years, the development of flexible smart phones has basically been in these three stages:
1. Flexible and bendable: In fact, it has been applied to dual-curved full-screen mobile phones. However, the purpose of this design is to increase the screen-to-body ratio, and it does not bring "soft" pleasure to users.
2. Flexible and foldable: It brings flexible smart phones into a new stage of development. In February 2019, Huawei launched its first 5G flexible folding phone Mate X at the Mobile World Congress. This phone is equipped with a BOE 8-inch flexible screen that can be folded along a fixed hinge, making the smartphone have the characteristics of a tablet computer. . This is exactly the meaning given to smart mobile terminals by flexible folding technology: one machine has multiple functions and is easy to carry.
3. Flexible and curlable: The screen can be curled arbitrarily, which will subvert the inherent shape of smart terminals and break the boundaries between smart phones, tablet computers, notebooks, displays and other products.
Although it is only a popular science experiment for flexible curling, the future application of flexible curling is already very fascinating. Flexible curling, the quality of domestic flexible screens is already available, but the emergence of flexible curling smart terminals requires the efforts of the entire industry, such as batteries, PCBs, protective glass and other components that need to be flexible.