Jörg Neidhardt¹, Matthias Fahland¹, Wiebke Langgemach¹, Manuela Junghähnel^2
1Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technologies, Dresden, Germany
²Fraunhofer-Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM– ASSID, Moritzburg, German
Flexible glass with thicknesses of 100 µm is an emerging substrate material with already established applications for foldable displays as well as for micro-electronic packaging applications. Beyond that, it is readily considered for e.g. weight saving solutions combining the beneficial properties of glass with its flexi-bility, may it be for smart glazing applications for building and automotive, thin bendable displays for surface integration or as a functionalized barrier materi-al/substrate for photovoltaics and flexible electronics.
Beyond the proof of concept, however, the scalability of the functionalization process must be demonstrated between TRL3-7. This often poses a serious chal-lenge as processing, handling, cleaning, and inspection procedures must be adapted and demonstrated at appropriate equipment platforms. Moreover, cru-cial parameters like mechanical thin film stress and the substrate strength must be evaluated and controlled.
Fraunhofer’s mission is therefore to support product and process development for ultrathin flexible glass. For this purpose, Fraunhofer FEP has established equipment and processing competences for the transfer of lab-scale results to pilot-level. The platforms for roll-to-roll, sheet-to-sheet as well as stationary wa-fer processing will be introduced alongside with the dedicated installations for cleaning, inspection and handling of flexible glass substrates up to 600 x 1200 mm² size.
Special emphasis will be on the mechanical characterization of the sensitive ultra-thin glass substrates. Here, the impact of the various processing steps will be cor-related to damage thresholds and mitigation strategies will be introduced.
Initial results for emerging use cases such as smart glazings, bendable displays, and for advanced heterogenous integration solutions such as ultrathin glass in-terposer will be presented and discussed.