BASF Develops Plastic Flexible Substrate Technology for Voice Coils and Next-Generation OLEDs

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] The Asia-Pacific Electronic Materials Research Center of the global chemical company BASF has succeeded in developing plastic flexible substrate technology for OLED displays in collaboration with Sungkyunkwan University. Through this industry-academic cooperative research for the development of next-generation display material technology, they secured plastic substrate material technology with transparency and thermal expansion coefficients equivalent to those of glass substrates.

Dr. Marc Schroeder of BASF's Asia-Pacific Electronic Materials Research Center and the research team of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University, including Professors Ki-ra Lee, Seong-min Jo, Pil-jin Yoo, and Deok-jun Kim, jointly manufactured a nanocomposite film containing BASF's polymer material polyethersulfone (PESU) and refractive index-adjusted nanoparticles. This film has excellent transparency and a low thermal expansion coefficient, making it suitable for use as a plastic flexible substrate for OLED displays.

The Sungkyunkwan University research team and BASF coated zinc sulfide (ZnS) particles with silicon dioxide (SiO2) to match the refractive index of the polyethersulfone polymer, achieving over 90% relative transparency in the composite film. At the same time, by inducing chemical bonding between the particles and the polymer, they were able to reduce the thermal expansion coefficient to 12 ppm/℃, which is significantly lower than the practical requirement level of 20 ppm/℃, based on a 15% mass ratio.

The research results were selected as a featured cover paper in the prestigious international journal in the field of materials science, Advanced Materials Interfaces, and published in issue 24 in December 2020. The industry-academic cooperation team is currently conducting follow-up research for the commercialization of plastic flexible substrates for OLED displays.

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