Development of 'Sandwich Flexible Substrate'... Flexible Without New Materials

[Asia Economy Reporter Junho Hwang] Domestic researchers have developed a technology that can configure flexible substrates by inserting a soft material layer into the hard substrates of existing commercialized electronic devices. This allows the implementation of flexible substrates without developing new material-based substrates, and various applications such as wearable devices are expected.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 6th that Professor Yoon-Young Jung's research team at POSTECH succeeded in developing next-generation foldable electronic device technology that inserts a soft material inside the substrate to induce stress relaxation effects.

This research is significant in that it found a way to implement flexible substrates using existing commercialized substrates. The research team devised a method to configure flexible substrates by inserting a soft material layer into indium tin oxide, a material widely used in display products. The soft material layer was composed of commercially available polyimide-based materials.

Indium tin oxide is a substrate material widely used in display products due to its excellent performance, but it has the disadvantage of being brittle, so it has not been used in the flexible display field.

Professor Yoon-Young Jung said, "Unlike existing flexible electronic device research focused on developing new materials, we proposed a new method of fabricating flexible devices that reduces stress applied to the device through structural changes in the substrate," adding, "this could dramatically complement the time-consuming and costly process of developing new flexible materials. "

The research team plans to secure heat resistance and chemical resistance during the manufacturing process and then explore the possibility of mass production.

The results of this research were published on the 6th in the international journal 'Scientific Reports.'

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