KONFEKT – ultra-thin glass on roll for flexible electronics at LOPEC
With support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), technology development partners Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP (Dresden, Germany), SCHOTT AG (Mainz, Germany), VON ARDENNE GmbH (Dresden, Germany) and tesa SE (Norderstedt, Germany) have been developing new applications for ultra-thin glass on roll since 2013 in the research consortium KONFEKT.
Glass which is bendable and flexible enough that it can be transferred directly from the melt to the roller for wrapping has become an actual product for the here and now. At the leading international exhibition for printed electronics, LOPEC, 28-30 March in Munich, each of the partners will have flexible thin glass on display at their respective exhibition booths. The international technology group SCHOTT is presenting several types of ultra-thin glass from its portfolio, which, due to their measure of flexibility, can not only be wrapped around a finger, but also onto rolls. The highlight at the company booth is a close-to-production prototype of ultra-thin glass on roll, which is currently being further developed and optimised through mid-2018 under the auspices of the research project KONFEKT in close cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology (Fraunhofer FEP), the specialty adhesive tape producer tesa SE and German equipment manufacturer VON ARDENNE GmbH.
With a minimal thickness of 25 micrometres (µm) SCHOTT’s innovative ultra-thin glass is thinner than a single human hair. In ultra-thin thicknesses of less than 150 micrometres this glass has proven to be bendable yet stable. This leads to advantages over other substrate materials such as plastics, metals or silicon. In addition, as an inorganic material, glass offers a wide variety of benefits, whether it is in terms of optical quality, temperature stability, chemical consistency, gas density or mechanical resistance.