FlexEnable strategically focuses on China development, creating a new wave of low-cost flexible displays

FlexEnable, a UK company headquartered in Cambridge, is a leader in the development and industrialization of flexible organic electronics and has implemented a major corporate strategy to revolutionize the Chinese display industry by providing the lowest cost and most scalable flexible display technology for mass market applications. Using organic materials as the basis of its technology solution, FlexEnable has demonstrated that organic LCD (OLCD) displays that do not rely on traditional glass backplanes can be produced in a highly competitive manner.

Paul Cain, strategic director at FlexEnable, said: “OLCD is the lowest-cost flexible display technology, three to four times cheaper than today’s flexible OLED technology; this is because OLCD uses existing display factories and supply chains and uses low-temperature processes, which reduces manufacturing costs and achieves high yields.”

The Chinese government has identified the display industry as a key revenue growth sector, resulting in rapid development of display panel technology and production in China, and domestic brands have already ranked among the top in the world's largest display manufacturers (Note 1), so this important market has become the focus of FlexEnable, an innovator in organic electronics technology.

Cain continued: "This new flexible display technology does not require extremely expensive new processes. From this perspective, FlexEnable is essentially providing an IP-based licensing business model, supported by actual existing material supply and services. We think this approach is very suitable for Chinese display manufacturers."

Cain concluded: “Importantly, as China takes the lead in global display panel manufacturing, its influence on the future direction of this major global industry is likely to become increasingly significant.”

FlexEnable has successfully demonstrated its scalable organic flexible display technology in multiple fields and applications, opening up many possibilities for product designs incorporating new OLCDs in many other areas, which are key areas in China, including:

Consumer Electronics

Smart Appliances

Automotive and Aerospace

Laptops and Tablets

HDR TVs and Monitors

Digital Signage

Over the past decade, China's flat panel display (FPD) production has achieved tremendous growth, changing the global competitive landscape of the display industry. It is expected that by 2023, the number of displays manufactured in China will reach 62% of the global production capacity. As a result, display manufacturers will face corresponding pressure to differentiate in terms of product performance and application. China has invested in the mass production of emerging display technologies, including flexible OLCD, ultra-high contrast LCD (dual-cell LCD), and wide color gamut displays.

China’s rapid growth in this area is partly the result of a wave of construction of panel manufacturing plants and production lines called 10.5-generation panels, including some of the largest display factories ever built, which use huge 2.9m x 3.4m sheets of glass, processed in one piece before being cut to size for TV displays.

Why is flexibility needed?

Flexibility brings many advantages (Note 2), one of which is that it does not need to use glass, so it is shatter-proof, while opening up the full potential of today's flexible display market. One of the great advantages of OLCD technology is that it unlocks a whole new dimension of design freedom for the wider display market. The much lower temperatures required to produce these organic transistors allow the use of flexible plastic substrates, which are ultra-thin, lightweight, and can be cut and formed on curved surfaces.

Flexible displays are a market that is expected to grow rapidly. For example, market analysis by Markets and Markets (Note 3) shows that the entire flexible electronics market is expected to grow from US$23.92 billion in 2018 to US$40.37 billion in 2023, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11% during this period. According to the report, the adoption of flexible displays in smartphones, TVs, and signage applications is a key driver of this high-growth wave.

Material basis of OLCD

FlexEnable’s technology offering is based on the company’s extensive portfolio of organic carbon-based materials under the FlexiOM™ brand. FlexEnable now offers these organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) materials, along with a complete, industrially proven manufacturing process, enabling the adoption of OLCD technology in existing LCD production lines.

By using these materials, FlexEnable has replaced rigid substrates with paper-thin and lightweight flexible plastic backplanes that support active-matrix displays and can function as displays when bent. "Paper-thin" means that the OTFT backplane can be as thin as 25 microns, while an A4-sized sheet weighs just 6 grams. The OTFT backplane also has better electrical stability and higher electron mobility than "amorphous silicon" (a-Si).

Most importantly, despite using this organic material to replace a-Si materials, the display can still be manufactured using traditional processes and all the standard equipment available in today's display production lines, which is the value.

Cambridge phenomenon

The value of FlexEnable flexible displays comes directly from the innovations coming out of the high-tech incubation centre in Cambridge, UK, where the talent is now merging the ‘town and gown’ to create a thriving, high-growth creative community.

FlexEnable has gathered the world's leading organic electronics manufacturing engineering talent, who have a total of more than 1,000 engineering years of collective experience in organic electronics materials and process development, and hold more than 1,000 patents. FlexEnable CEO Chuck Milligan has more than 25 years of global commercial operations and overall management experience, and the company's management team is backed by a strong board of directors, including Professor Henning Sirringhaus, winner of the prestigious Faraday Medal in Physics, Lord Alec Broers, Member of the British Parliament, and serial entrepreneur and Amadeus Capital Partners co-founder Dr. Hermann Hauser.