Category Archives: Flexible Displays

Polymer semiconductors, which can be processed on large-area and mechanically flexible substrates with low cost, are considered as one of the main components for future plastic electronics. However, they, especially n-type semiconducting polymers, currently lag behind inorganic counterparts in the charge carrier mobility – which characterizes how quickly charge carriers (electron) can move inside a semiconductor – and the chemical stability in ambient air.

Recently, a joint research team, consisting of Prof. Kilwon Cho and Dr. Boseok Kang with Pohang University of Science and Technology, and Prof. Yun-Hi Kim and Dr. Ran Kim with Gyungsang National University, has developed a new n-type semiconducting polymer with superior electron mobility and oxidative stability. The research outcome was published in Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) as a cover article and highlighted by the editors in JACS Spotlights.

The team modified a n-type conjugated polymer with semi-fluoroalkyl side chains – which are found to have several unique properties, such as hydrophobicity, rigidity, thermal stability, chemical and oxidative resistance, and the ability to self-organize. As a result, the modified polymer was shown to form a superstructure composed of polymer backbone crystals and side-chain crystals, resulting in a high degree of semicrystalline order. The team explained this phenomenon is attributed to the strong self-organization of the side chains and significantly boosts charge transport in polymer semiconductors.

Prof. Cho emphasized “We investigated the effects of semi-fluoroalkyl side chains of conjugated polymers at the molecular level and suggested a new strategy to design highly-performing polymeric materials for next-generation plastic electronics”.

This research was supported by the Center for Advanced Soft Electronics under the Global Frontier Research Program and the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.

Liquid crystals, discovered more than 125 years ago, are at work behind the screens of TV and computer monitors, clocks, watches and most other electronics displays, and scientists are still discovering new twists–and bends–in their molecular makeup.

Liquid crystals are an exotic state of matter that flows like a fluid but in which the molecules may be oriented in a crystal-like way. At the microscopic scale, liquid crystals come in several different configurations, including a naturally spiraling “twist-bend” molecular arrangement, discovered in 2013, that has excited a flurry of new research.

Now, using a pioneering X-ray technique developed at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a research team has recorded the first direct measurements confirming a tightly wound spiral molecular arrangement that could help unravel the mysteries of its formation and possibly improve liquid-crystal display (LCD) performance, such as the speed at which they selectively switch light on or off in tiny screen areas.

Researchers examined the spiral 'twist-bend' structure (right) formed by boomerang-shaped liquid crystal molecules (left and center) measuring 3 nanometers in length, using a pioneering X-ray technique at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source. A better understanding of this spiral form, discovered in 2013, could lead to new applications for liquid crystals and improved liquid-crystal display screens. (Credit: Zosia Rostomian/Berkeley Lab; Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.147803; Journal of Materials Chemistry C, DOI: 10.1039/C4TC01927J)

Researchers examined the spiral ‘twist-bend’ structure (right) formed by boomerang-shaped liquid crystal molecules (left and center) measuring 3 nanometers in length, using a pioneering X-ray technique at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source. A better understanding of this spiral form, discovered in 2013, could lead to new applications for liquid crystals and improved liquid-crystal display screens. (Credit: Zosia Rostomian/Berkeley Lab; Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.147803; Journal of Materials Chemistry C, DOI: 10.1039/C4TC01927J)

The findings could also help explain how so-called “chiral” structure–molecules can exhibit wildly different properties based on their left- or right-handedness (chirality), which is of interest in biology, materials science and chemistry–can form from organic molecules that do not exhibit such handedness.

“This newly discovered ‘twist-bend’ phase of liquid crystals is one of the hottest topics in liquid crystal research,” said Chenhui Zhu, a research scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), where the X-ray studies were performed.

“Now, we have provided the first definitive evidence for the twist-bend structure. The determination of this structure will without question advance our understanding of its properties, such as its response to temperature and to stress, which may help improve how we operate the current generation of LCDs.”

Zhu was the lead author on a related research paper published in the April 7 edition of Physical Review Letters.

While there are now several competing screen technologies to standard LCDs, the standard LCD market is still huge, representing more than one-third of the revenue in the electronic display market. The overall display market is expected to top $150 billion in revenue this year.

The individual molecules in the structure determined at Berkeley Lab are constructed like flexible, nanoscale boomerangs, just a few nanometers, or billionths of a meter, in length and with rigid ends and flexible middles. In the twist-bend phase, the spiraling structure they form resembles a bunch of snakes lined up and then wound snugly around the length of an invisible pole.

Zhu tuned low-energy or “soft” X-rays at the ALS to examine carbon atoms in the liquid crystal molecules, which provided details about the molecular orientation of their chemical bonds and the structure they formed. The technique he used for the study is known as soft X-ray scattering. The spiraling, helical molecular arrangement of the liquid crystal samples would have been undetectable by conventional X-ray scattering techniques.

The measurements show that the liquid crystals complete a 360-degree twist-bend over a distance of just 8 nanometers at room temperature, which Zhu said is an “amazingly short” distance given that each molecule is 3 nanometers long, and such a strongly coiled structure is very rare.

The driving force for the formation of the tight spiral in the twist-bend arrangement is still unclear, and the structure exhibits unusual optical properties that also warrant further study, Zhu said.

Researchers found that the spiral “pitch,” or width of one complete spiral turn, becomes a little longer with increasing temperature, and the spiral abruptly disappears at sufficiently high temperature as the material adopts a different configuration.

“Currently, this experiment can’t be done anywhere else,” Zhu said. “We are the first team to use this soft X-ray scattering technique to study this liquid-crystal phase.”

Standard LCDs often use nematic liquid crystals, a phase of liquid crystals that naturally align in the same direction–like a group of compass needles that are parallel to one another, pointing in one direction.

In these standard LCD devices, rod-like liquid crystal molecules are sandwiched between specially treated plates of glass that cause the molecules to “lie down” rather than point toward the glass. The glass is typically treated to induce a 90-degree twist in the molecular arrangement, so that the molecules closest to one glass plate are perpendicular to those closest to the other glass plate.

It’s like a series of compass needles made to face north at the top, smoothly reorienting to the northeast in the middle, and pointing east at the bottom. This molecularly twisted state is then electrically distorted to allow polarized light to pass through at varying brightness, for example, or to block light (by straightening the twist completely).

Future experiments will explore how the spirals depend on molecular shape and respond to variations in temperature, electric field, ultraviolet light, and stress, Zhu added.

He also hopes to explore similar spiraling structures, such as a liquid crystal phase known as the helical nanofilament, which shows promise for solar energy applications. Studies of DNA, synthetic proteins, and amyloid fibrils such as those associated with Alzheimer’s disease, might help explain the role of handedness in how organic molecules self-assemble.

With brighter, more laser-like X-ray sources and faster X-ray detectors, it may be possible to see details in how the spiraling twist-bend structure forms and fluctuates in real time in materials, Zhu also said.

“I am hoping our ongoing experiments can provide unique information to benefit other theories and experiments in this field,” he noted.

Instead of reading a label, consumers could be interacting with an electronic screen on packaging in the future, thanks to a revolutionary new development by scientists at the University of Sheffield.

The scientists collaborated with technology company Novalia to create a new way of displaying information on packaging, a move that could revolutionise the packaging industry.

This technology could be used in greetings cards or products where a customer could receive a simple message. More complex developments could include a countdown timer on the side of a packet to indicate when a timed product was ready – such as hair-dye, pregnancy tests or home-baking using a ‘traffic lights’ system.

In a paper published in the IEEE Journal of Display Technology, the team explain how a screen can be fixed onto packaging to display information.

The process involves printing electronic tracks onto paper and then fixing low-cost electronics and a polymer LED display to the paper using an adhesive that conducts electricity.

Working together, University of Sheffield scientists and Novalia also designed and constructed a touch-pad keyboard on the paper that allows a user to selectively ‘drive’ the LEDs in the display.

The research has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and testing so far has taken place on paper but the process could potentially be printed on other surfaces.

The team’s next steps are to create fully flexible organic displays on a plastic substrate that then fix onto the electronic tracks. The LED devices need to be low-cost and flexible enough to be used on all packaging.

Professor David Lidzey from the University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy said: “Labels on packaging could become much more innovative, and allow customers to interact with and explore new products. The use of displays or light emitting panels on packaging will also allow companies to communicate brand awareness in a more sophisticated manner.”

Chris Jones from Novalia said: “The paper-based packaging industry is worth billions of dollars. This innovative system we have developed with the University of Sheffield could give manufacturers a way to gain market share by being able to distinguish its products from competitors.”

Juelich physicists have discovered unexpected effects in doped graphene – i.e. graphene that is mixed with foreign atoms. They investigated samples of the carbon compound enriched with the foreign atom nitrogen on various substrate materials. Unwanted interactions with these substrates can influence the electric properties of graphene. The researchers at the Peter Gruenberg Institute have now shown that effective doping depends on the choice of substrate material. The scientists’ results were published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Harder than diamond and tougher than steel, light weight, transparent, flexible, and extremely conductive: the mesh material graphene is regarded as the material of the future. It could make computers faster, mobile phones more flexible, and touchscreens thinner. But so far, the industrial production of the carbon lattice, which is only one atom thick, has proven problematic: in almost all cases, a substrate is required. The search for a suitable material for this purpose is one of the major challenges on the path towards practical applications because if undesirable interactions occur, they can cause the graphene to lose its electric properties.

For some years, scientists have been testing silicon carbide – a crystalline compound of silicon and carbon – for its suitability as a substrate material. When the material is heated to more than 1400 degrees Celsius in an argon atmosphere, graphene can be grown on the crystal. However, this ‘epitaxial monolayer graphene’ displays – very slight – interaction with the substrate, which limits its electron mobility.

In order to circumvent this problem, hydrogen is introduced into the interface between the two materials. This method is known as hydrogen intercalation. The bonds between the graphene and the substrate material are separated and saturated by the hydrogen atoms. This suppresses the electronic influence of the silicon crystal while the graphene stays mechanically joined with the substrate: quasi-free-standing monolayer graphene.

High-precision measurements with standing X-rays

For practical applications, the electrical properties of graphene must be modifiable – for example by introducing additional electrons into the material. This is effected by targeted “contamination” of the carbon lattice with foreign atoms. For this process, known as doping, the graphene is bombarded with nitrogen ions and then annealed. This results in defects in the lattice structure: some few carbon atoms – fewer than 1 % – separate from the lattice and are replaced with nitrogen atoms, which bring along additional electrons.

Scientists at Juelich’s Peter Gruenberg Institute – Functional Nanostructures at Surfaces (PGI-3) have now, for the first time, studied whether and how the structure of the substrate material influences this doping process. At the synchrotron radiation source Diamond Light Source in Didcot, Oxfordshire, UK, Francois C. Bocquet and his colleagues doped samples of epitaxial and quasi-free-standing monolayer graphene and investigated its structural and electronic properties. By means of standing X-ray wave fields, they were able to scan both graphene and substrate at a precision of a few millionths of a micrometre – less than a tenth of the radius of an atom.

Nitrogen atoms in the interface layer are also suitable for doping

Their findings were surprising. “Some of the nitrogen atoms diffused from the graphene into the silicon carbide,” explains Bocquet. “It was previously believed that the nitrogen bombardment only affected the graphene, but not the substrate material.”

Although both samples were treated in the same way, they exhibited different nitrogen concentrations, but almost identical electronic doping: not all nitrogen atoms were integrated in the graphene lattice, nevertheless the number of electrons in the graphene rose as if this were the case. The key to this unexpected result lies in the different behaviour of the interface layers between graphene and substrate. For the epitaxial graphene, nothing changed: the interface layer remained stable, the structure unchanged. In the quasi-free-standing graphene, however, some of the hydrogen atoms between graphene and substrate were replaced with nitrogen atoms. According to Bocquet: “If you examine the quasi-free-standing graphene, you will find a nitrogen atom underneath the graphene coat in some places. These nitrogen atoms, although they are not part of the graphene, can dope the lattice without destroying it. This unforeseen result is very promising for future applications in micro- and nanoelectronics.”

Two-dimensional electronic devices could inch closer to their ultimate promise of low power, high efficiency and mechanical flexibility with a processing technique developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

A team led by Olga Ovchinnikova of ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences Division used a helium ion microscope, an atomic-scale “sandblaster,” on a layered ferroelectric surface of a bulk copper indium thiophosphate. The result, detailed in the journal ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, is a surprising discovery of a material with tailored properties potentially useful for phones, photovoltaics, flexible electronics and screens.

This diagram illustrates the effect of helium ions on the mechanical and electrical properties of the layered ferroelectric: a.) Disappearance domains in the exposed area; as the mound forms yellow regions (ferroelectricity) gradually disappear; b.) Mechanical properties of the material; warmer colors indicate hard areas, cool colors indicate soft areas; c.) Conductivity enhancement; warmer colors show insulating areas, cooler colors show more conductive areas. Credit: ORNL

This diagram illustrates the effect of helium ions on the mechanical and electrical properties of the layered ferroelectric: a.) Disappearance domains in the exposed area; as the mound forms yellow regions (ferroelectricity) gradually disappear; b.) Mechanical properties of the material; warmer colors indicate hard areas, cool colors indicate soft areas; c.) Conductivity enhancement; warmer colors show insulating areas, cooler colors show more conductive areas. Credit: ORNL

“Our method opens pathways to direct-write and edit circuitry on 2-D material without the complicated current state-of-the-art multi-step lithographic processes,” Ovchinnikova said.

She and colleague Alex Belianinov noted that while the helium ion microscope is typically used to cut and shape matter, they demonstrated that it can also be used to control ferroelectric domain distribution, enhance conductivity and grow nanostructures. Their work could establish a path to replace silicon as the choice for semiconductors in some applications.

“Everyone is looking for the next material – the thing that will replace silicon for transistors,” said Belianinov, the lead author. “2-D devices stand out as having low power consumption and being easier and less expensive to fabricate without requiring harsh chemicals that are potentially harmful to the environment.”

Reducing power consumption by using 2-D-based devices could be as significant as improving battery performance. “Imagine having a phone that you don’t have to recharge but once a month,” Ovchinnikova said.

EV Group (EVG), a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for the MEMS, nanotechnology and semiconductor markets, today introduced the EVG 7200 LA SmartNIL system for display manufacturing and other applications that require large-area substrates.

Leveraging EVG’s proprietary SmartNIL technology, the automated UV nanoimprint lithography (UV-NIL) system enables cost-efficient nano-patterning in high-volume manufacturing (HVM) applications. The EVG7200 LA is specifically designed for Gen 2 (370 mm x 470 mm) display panel manufacturing but can address a wide spectrum of biotechnology, photonics and optics applications. A few examples of imprinted patterns and devices supported by the EVG7200 LA include: wire grid polarizers, which enable better clarity and lower power consumption; lenticular lenses for direct-view 3D screens; and other functional surfaces that enable new features and specifications.

EVG7200 LA in cleanroom at EVG headquarters

EVG7200 LA in cleanroom at EVG headquarters

NIL is a highly cost-efficient method of enabling nano-scale patterns on large areas since it is not limited by sophisticated optics that are required with optical lithography, and since it can provide optimal pattern fidelity for extremely small (sub-100nm) structures. EVG, which has the largest installed base of NIL systems in production, has continually extended the capabilities of its NIL solutions to address new and emerging market needs and technology requirements. The latest addition to EVG’s NIL portfolio–the EVG7200 LA–brings nanoimprint lithography to a whole new level by enabling high-quality nano-patterning on panel-size substrates. As a result, novel structures based on nanotechnology that can improve device performance are now available for use in display manufacturing and other demanding large-area applications.

“EV Group’s market and technology leadership in nanoimprint lithography is built on years of field experience working with our partners and customers in multiple markets, as well as research and development work in our demo labs and NIL Photonics Competence Center,” stated Dr. Thomas Glinsner, corporate technology director at EV Group. “Driven by customer demand, we took our robust SmartNIL technology–which has already achieved outstanding imprint results on substrates up to 200 mm in diameter in high-volume manufacturing–and scaled it up to Gen 2 panel size. With the EVG7200 LA, we can now offer a full patterning solution for the display market, where companies have not previously considered NIL for their manufacturing efforts.”

The EVG7200 LA features EVG’s SmartNIL technology, which in combination with multi-use soft working stamp technology adapts to uneven and rough surfaces to provide unmatched conformal imprinting (down to 40nm) with high uniformity and pattern fidelity. This capability is especially critical to successfully manufacture wire grid polarizers, where pattern transfer into metal layers is needed and where critical dimensions of the device features fall below 100nm. In addition, SmartNIL’s soft stamp fabrication technology combined with automated low-force detachment extends the lifetime of master stamps, which results in significant cost savings for customers.

Demonstrations of the EVG7200 LA SmartNIL system are available at EVG’s headquarters in St. Florian, Austria.

Scientists have created the world’s thinnest lens, one two-thousandth the thickness of a human hair, opening the door to flexible computer displays and a revolution in miniature cameras.

Lead researcher Dr Yuerui (Larry) Lu from The Australian National University (ANU) said the discovery hinged on the remarkable potential of the molybdenum disulphide crystal.

Larry Lu (left), and Jiong Yang with the lens shown on screen. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU

Larry Lu (left), and Jiong Yang with the lens shown on screen. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU

“This type of material is the perfect candidate for future flexible displays,” said Dr Lu, leader of Nano-Electro-Mechanical System (NEMS) Laboratory in the ANU Research School of Engineering.

“We will also be able to use arrays of micro lenses to mimic the compound eyes of insects.”

The 6.3-nanometre lens outshines previous ultra-thin flat lenses, made from 50-nanometre thick gold nano-bar arrays, known as a metamaterial.

“Molybdenum disulphide is an amazing crystal,” said Dr Lu. “It survives at high temperatures, is a lubricant, a good semiconductor and can emit photons too.

“The capability of manipulating the flow of light in atomic scale opens an exciting avenue towards unprecedented miniaturisation of optical components and the integration of advanced optical functionalities.”

Molybdenum disulphide is in a class of materials known as chalcogenide glasses that have flexible electronic characteristics that have made them popular for high-technology components.

Dr Lu’s team created their lens from a crystal 6.3-nanometres thick – 9 atomic layers – which they had peeled off a larger piece of molybdenum disulphide with sticky tape.

They then created a 10-micron radius lens, using a focussed ion beam to shave off the layers atom by atom, until they had the dome shape of the lens.

The team discovered that single layers of molybdenum disulphide, 0.7 nanometres thick, had remarkable optical properties, appearing to a light beam to be 50 times thicker, at 38 nanometres. This property, known as optical path length, determines the phase of the light and governs interference and diffraction of light as it propagates.

“At the beginning we couldn’t imagine why molybdenum disulphide had such surprising properties,” said Dr Lu.

Collaborator Assistant Professor Zongfu Yu at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, developed a simulation and showed that light was bouncing back and forth many times inside the high refractive index crystal layers before passing through.

Molybdenum disulphide crystal’s refractive index, the property that quantifies the strength of a material’s effect on light, has a high value of 5.5. For comparison, diamond, whose high refractive index causes its sparkle, is only 2.4, and water’s refractive index is 1.3.

This study is published in the Nature serial journal Light: Science and Applications.

It’s hardly a character flaw, but organic transistors–the kind envisioned for a host of flexible electronics devices–behave less than ideally, or at least not up to the standards set by their rigid, predictable silicon counterparts. When unrecognized, a new study finds, this disparity can lead to gross overestimates of charge-carrier mobility, a property key to the performance of electronic devices.

If measurements fail to account for these divergent behaviors in so-called “organic field-effect transistors” (OFETs), the resulting estimates of how fast electrons or other charge carriers travel in the devices may be more than 10 times too high, report researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Wake Forest University and Penn State University. The team’s measurements implicate an overlooked source of electrical resistance as the root of inaccuracies that can inflate estimates of organic semiconductor performance.

A circuit made from organic thin-film transistors is fabricated on a flexible plastic substrate. A team of NIST, Wake Forest, and Penn State University researchers has identified an overlooked source of electrical resistance that can exert a dominant influence on organic-semiconductor performance. Credit: Patrick Mansell/Penn State

A circuit made from organic thin-film transistors is fabricated on a flexible plastic substrate. A team of NIST, Wake Forest, and Penn State University researchers has identified an overlooked source of electrical resistance that can exert a dominant influence on organic-semiconductor performance. Credit: Patrick Mansell/Penn State

Their article appears in the latest issue of Nature Communications.

Already used in light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, electrically conductive polymers and small molecules are being groomed for applications in flexible displays, flat-panel TVs, sensors, “smart” textiles, solar cells and “Internet of Things” applications. Besides flexibility, a key selling point is that the organic devices–sometimes called “plastic electronics”–can be manufactured in large volumes and far more inexpensively than today’s ubiquitous silicon-based devices.

A key sticking point, however, is the challenge of achieving the high levels of charge-carrier mobility that these applications require. In the semiconductor arena, the general rule is that higher mobility is always better, enabling faster, more responsive devices. So chemists have set out to hurry electrons along. Working from a large palette of organic materials, they have been searching for chemicals–alone or in combination–that will up the speed limit in their experimental devices.

Just as for silicon semiconductors, assessments of performance require measurements of current and voltage. In the basic transistor design, a source electrode injects charge into the transistor channel leading to a drain electrode. In between sits a gate electrode that regulates the current in the channel by applying voltage, functioning much like a valve.

Typically, measurements are analyzed according to a longstanding theory for silicon field-effect transistors. Plug in the current and voltage values and the theory can be used to predict properties that determine how well the transistor will perform in a circuit.

Results are rendered as a series of “transfer curves.” Of particular interest in the new study are curves showing how the drain current changes in response to a change in the gate electrode voltage. For devices with ideal behavior, this relationship provides a good measure of how fast charge carriers move through the channel to the drain.

“Organic semiconductors are more prone to non-ideal behavior because the relatively weak intermolecular interactions that make them attractive for low-temperature processing also limit the ability to engineer efficient contacts as one would for state-of-the-art silicon devices,” says electrical engineer David Gundlach, who leads NIST’s Thin Film Electronics Project. “Since there are so many different organic materials under investigation for electronics applications, we decided to step back and do a measurement check on the conventional wisdom.”

Using what Gundlach describes as the semiconductor industry’s “workhorse” measurement methods, the team scrutinized an OFET made of single-crystal rubrene, an organic semiconductor with a molecule shaped a bit like a microscale insect. Their measurements revealed that electrical resistance at the source electrode–the contact point where current is injected into the OFET– significantly influences the subsequent flow of electrons in the transistor channel, and hence the mobility.

In effect, contact resistance at the source electrode creates the equivalent of a second valve that controls the entry of current into the transistor channel. Unaccounted for in the standard theory, this valve can overwhelm the gate–the de facto¬ regulator between the source and drain in a silicon semiconductor transistor–and become the dominant influence on transistor behavior.

At low gate voltages, this contact resistance at the source can overwhelm device operation. Consequently, model-based estimates of charge-carrier mobility in organic semiconductors may be more than 10 times higher than the actual value, the research team reports.

Hardly ideal behavior, but the aim of the study, the researchers write, is to improve “understanding of the source of the non-ideal behavior and its impact on extracted figures of merit,” especially charge-carrier mobility. This knowledge, they add, can inform efforts to develop accurate, comprehensive measurement methods for benchmarking organic semiconductor performance, as well as guide efforts to optimize contact interfaces.

The growing popularity of smartwatches, fitness monitors and other wearable applications is driving up shipments of the displays used in these devices, from 34 million units in 2015 to 39 million in 2016. Nearly six out of 10 displays used in wearable devices in 2015 were active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) panels used in smartwatches, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), a global source of critical information and insight.

“Smartwatch manufacturers are increasingly turning to AMOLED displays because they are thinner, lighter, have high color-performance and consume less power than other types of displays,” said Jerry Kang, principal analyst for IHS Technology. “This trend will continue in 2016, since flexible AMOLED display free-form design process enables narrower form factors and even folding bezels.”

Apple, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Microsoft have all adopted flexible AMOLED displays for their smartwatches. Supported by this widespread adoption by leading manufacturers, unit shipments of flexible AMOLED displays for smartwatches are expected to increase from 23 million units in 2016 to 80 million in 2024.

Smartwatches are expected to continue to lead the wearable display market in the coming years. Unit shipments are forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22 percent from 2015 and reach 118 million units in 2024, according to the IHS Wearable Display Market & Technology Report. Even with this growth, total unit shipments of smartwatch displays will only equal 5 percent of smartphone display shipments in 2024.

Wearable_Display_Shipments

SEMI today announced the “Call for Papers” for technical sessions and presentations for SEMICON Europa 2016 which takes place 25-27 October in Grenoble, France.

SEMICON Europa 2016 will feature more than 100 hours of technical sessions and presentations focused on critical industry topics that are shaping the design and manufacturing of semiconductors, MEMS, printed and flexible electronics, and other related technologies.  Abstracts for presentations are now being accepted for:

  • Advanced Packaging Conference: “The Balancing Act between Consumer and Harsh Environment Packaging”
  • Power Electronics Conference: “The Power Awakens”
  • 2016FLEX Europe: “Silicon Electronics + Flexible Systems Enabling New Markets”

The SEMICON Europa 2016 abstract submission deadline is 29 April.  Prospective presenters are invited to submit abstracts (1,000-2,000 characters). Material must be original, non-commercial and non-published. Abstracts must clearly detail the nature, scope, content, organization, key points, and significance of the proposed presentation.  Visit www.semiconeuropa.org or contact Christina Fritsch, SEMI Europe, at Tel: +49 30 303080770 or email [email protected].

Co-located and leveraging SEMICON Europa 2016, 2016FLEX Europe(formerly known as PE Europe)will also take place in Grenoble from 25-27 October.

SEMICON Europa and 2016FLEX Europe (now powered by SEMI’s Strategic Association Partner FlexTech) will attract over 5,500 attendees involved in the microelectronics supply chain, from equipment and material suppliers, IC manufacturers, system integrators to end users. Special programs this year focus on advanced and smart manufacturing (Industry 4.0), power electronics, imaging, electronics and materials for the medical and automotive applications, creating an opportunity to explore applications and manufacturing solutions for flexible, printed and hybrid electronics.