February 9, 2005, San Jose, CA--Vitex Systems has been awarded a research and development contract from the San Jose-based U.S. Display Consortium (USDC), in which Vitex and USDC will share the near $2-million cost of a multi-phased project, which will target scaling-up Vitex's proprietary flexible glass substrate technology to high-volume roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing capability for the production of flexible OLEDs.
Flexible substrates afford tremendous opportunities for the display and electronics industries -- with the potential to significantly reduce weight and thickness, be highly robust, and open new markets and applications. However, the lack of an effective barrier to moisture and oxygen (both of which can easily penetrate flexible substrates, thereby limiting usable lifetime and eventually destroying the device) has impeded commercial development. Vitex has developed a unique thin-film encapsulation solution, Barix, to resolve these moisture and oxygen sensitivity problems.
Under the terms of the contract with USDC, Vitex will explore producing this flexible glass substrate on a high-volume R2R manufacturing line with the improved barrier performance and lower defect levels necessary to meet the stringent quality requirements associated with the production of OLED displays.