AN ALTERNATIVE FLEXIBLE POLYMERIC GLASS SUBSTRATES FOR BENDABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICES

Abstract

Flexible electronics have come a long way in the last several decades, from developing flexible solar cell arrays constructed of ultrathin single-crystal silicon to developing flexible organic light emitting diode displays on polymeric substrates. Flexible electronics are appealing for various reasons, including the fact that they are more flexible, lighter, portable, and inexpensive to manufacture than conventional rigid substrate counterparts. Glass has become the primary and predictable part of every display device due to its excellent transparency, corrosion resistance, and good weather ability. Along with these benefits, there are various shortcomings of glass substrate like rigidity, low impact strength, poor shatter resistance, heavyweight, and high melt viscosity, which led to processing disadvantages and restricted the electronic equipment's long life where the outer surface is made up with glass. On the other hand, indium titanium oxide (ITO) is the most extensively used transparent conducting electrode (TCE) due to its outstanding optoelectronic properties with a sheet resistance of 10-25 Ω sq-1 at about 90% optical transparency in the visible region. Current optoelectronic devices are accumulated on an ITO-coated glass substrate. Bearing in mind the progress of optoelectronic devices, ITO has numerous restrictions: (1) it is becoming more and more pricey due to an anticipated scarcity of indium resources and its ever-rising consumption; (2) the deposition of ITO requires vacuum techniques and often higher temperatures; (3) it lacks flexibility and cracks easily on flexural stress, which bounds its usage for flexible electronics; (4) indium is known to diffuse into the active layers of OLEDs or OPV cells, which leads to degradation of device performance. Therefore, new categories of TCEs are instantly desired to substitute the typically used electrodes to keep up with the swiftness of device development. This report explores a prospective on synthesizing an “Alternative Polymer Substrate” to replace glass substrate in display devices. Polymer is a potential choice for the substrate as it is flexible, shatter-resistant, lightweight, and has good impact strength. Moreover, their properties can be enhanced by the addition of fillers to the polymer matrix. We planned to synthesize the copolymer consisting of the monomers Styrene and Vinyl Neodecanoate. Polystyrene is transparent but brittle as it has Tgof 100ºC whereas Poly (Vinyl Neodecanoate) has a sub-zero Tg for Bendable Electronic Devices” of -1.2ºC [17] due to which incorporating VNDc with Styrene may enhance the flexibility of the final polymer.