Novel Roll-to-Roll Deposition of Transparent Electrode on Plastic

Presented by A.g. Talma, Akzo Nobel Chemicals

Transparent electrodes are essential components in numerous consumer electronics products, such as displays, signage panels and lighting applications. Increasing demands on electrical and mechanical performance, cost, homogeneity and ruggedness have triggered the development and appearance on the market of new materials and production processes. This paper describes a novel roll-to-roll deposition process for a high performance transparent electrode material on plastic foil.

Transparent conductive oxide (TCO) materials, such as ITO, SnOx:F, and Sb:SnOx(ATO), Cd:SnOx , Al:ZnOx and F:ZnOx are members of a class of doped semiconductors which exhibit interesting electrical and optical properties: they are optically transparent, electrically conductive and infrared reflecting. Their application areas are as thin vacuum sputtered layers on glass panels, as components in e.g. touch screens, LCD-based displays and “smart” low-e windows. Increasing demand for thinner, lighter and in particular more rugged and lower cost components has lead to TCO layers deposited on plastic substrates. These “flexible” substrates allow to produce TCO material in roll-to-roll processes, which in turn offers a low-cost perspective and increased homogeneity of the TCO over considerable web width and length.