The fracture of brittle thin films on compliant substrates in flexible displays

One mechanical issue in flexible organic light emitting displays (OLED) is the fracture of extremely thin brittle conducting transparent oxide films deposited on thin flexible substrates. Understanding the behaviour of these films under flexed condition is essential for designer of flexible OLED. Co...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Chen, Zhong, Cotterell, Brian, Wang, Wei
Other Authors: School of Materials Science & Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/94812
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/8160
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:One mechanical issue in flexible organic light emitting displays (OLED) is the fracture of extremely thin brittle conducting transparent oxide films deposited on thin flexible substrates. Understanding the behaviour of these films under flexed condition is essential for designer of flexible OLED. Controlled buckling experiments on the film and substrate have been designed to study the fracture of the films under both tension and compression. Fracture of the film is superficially similar in both tension and compression. However, under tension a channelling crack is formed, while under compression, the film delaminates, buckles and cracks in a tunnelling motion. The fracture toughness of the film and the delamination toughness have been estimated from these experiments. Design to maximise the flexibility of the device is discussed.