The roll to roll technology for flexible devices market is growing, due to booming consumer electronics market, and ability of the technology to tolerate high defect density. Some of the factors restraining the growth of the roll to roll technology for flexible devices market are threat from substitute technologies and lack of expected progress in the technology.
Flexible devices are used in various fields, such as healthcare, energy, and electronics. Due to the advanced characteristics of flexible devices, its market has experienced strong growth during the past few years. Due to the thin profile of flexible devices, they can conform and bend to curved surfaces. They are very light in weight and support the invention of low cost applications, such as flexible printed circuits and OLED displays. The need for using high-volume processes for the fabrication of flexible devices is increasing, due to their up surging popularity. Thus, the flexible devices industry is gradually adopting the integration of roll to roll technology for the fabrication of flexible devices.
The roll to roll technology enables advanced manufacturing in the flexible devices industry. The technology involves routing of a substrate through various fabrication operations around the rollers forming a web. Generally, the polymer based substrates are used in roll to roll technology, which are dependent on the processing steps involved in applications and fabrication. With the advancements in circuits, chips and battery design, the electronic devices have become more portable. The photolithography technology has shrunk the size of circuits to 400 times.
Some of the applications of roll to roll technology include liquid crystal displays, amorphous silicon thin film transistors, integrated circuits, solar cells, and flexible devices. The roll to roll technology enables bulk production of high value technology products at meters-per-minute rates, such as photovoltaic roofing panels, flexible flat panel displays, and large area solid state lighting devices. The key types of technologies used in roll to roll technology for flexible devices are film deposition and patterning, assembly, cutting, testing and packaging, substrate selection, and basic roll-to-roll fabrication process. The film deposition and patterning include multilayer structures, additive methods, and subtractive methods.
Some of the technological developments in the roll to roll technology for flexible devices market are electroplating solutions for R2R flexible solar cells, flexible graphene supercapacitor, rechargeable battery by roll to roll process, paper-based roll to roll sensors, high efficiency cigs solar cells on plastic substrate, polymeric precursors for printing thin films for solar cells, thin film memory by roll to roll printing, R2R microstructure metamaterial films, membranes for high temperature PEM fuel cells, roll-to-roll fabrication of MEMS displays, and roll-to-roll printing system with micro-nozzles.
Some of the competitors in the global roll to roll technology for flexible devices market are Ascent Solar Technologies Inc., Flexium Interconnect Inc., Materion Corporation, GSI Technology Inc., E Ink Holdings Inc., Nippon Mektron Ltd., Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd., and Fujikura Ltd.
Global Roll to Roll Technology for Flexible Devices Market Segmentation
By Type
- Circuit Devices
- Flexible Printed Circuits
- Other Circuit Devices
- Optoelectronic Devices
- Displays
- Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal Displays
- Electrochromic Displays
- Electrophoretic Displays
- Organic Light-emitting Diode Displays
- Sensors And Other Devices
By Geography
- North America
- Europe
- Asia -Pacific
- ROW
