Commercial assessment of roll to roll manufacturing of electronic displays

摘要

The cost of manufacturing electronic displays currently limits the range of applications and markets into which it is currently economically feasible to adopt displays. Roll-to-roll manufacturing has been identified by the display industry as a new and fundamentally different manufacturing paradigm that has the potential to significantly reduce the manufacturing cost of a display relative to the conventional approaches used in the industry. This manufacturing cost reduction could have a profound impact on the display industry by not only transforming the display manufacturing infrastructure, but also by permitting electronic displays to penetrate new markets. The purpose of this thesis is to determine how roll-to-roll manufacturing technology could develop and to assess what impact the technology could have on the electronic display manufacturing industry. This work first identifies the material, patterning, and equipment technologies that need to come together in order for roll-to-roll manufacturing to be industrially feasible, and then determines how and if the technology will offer a cost reduction over conventional manufacturing techniques.