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In the field of electronic devices, roll-to-roll processing, also known as web processing, reel-to-reel processing or R2R, is the process of creating electronic devices on a roll of flexible plastic, metal
Roll-to-roll processing of large-area electronic devices reduces manufacturing cost. Most notable would be
In the field of electronic devices, roll-to-roll processing, also known as web processing, reel-to-reel processing or R2R, is the process of creating electronic devices on a roll of flexible plastic, metal foil
Foil may refer to:
Materials
* Foil (metal), a quite thin sheet of metal, usually manufactured with a rolling mill machine
* Metal leaf, a very thin sheet of decorative metal
* Aluminium foil, a type of wrapping for food
* Tin foil, metal foil ma ...
, or flexible glass. In other fields predating this use, it can refer to any process of applying coating, printing
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...
, or performing other processes starting with a roll of a flexible material and re-reeling after the process to create an output roll. These processes, and others such as sheeting, can be grouped together under the general term converting. When the rolls of material have been coated, laminated or printed they can be subsequently slit to their finished size on a slitter rewinder.
In electronic devices
Large circuits made withthin-film transistor
A thin-film transistor (TFT) is a special type of field-effect transistor (FET) where the transistor is made by thin film deposition. TFTs are grown on a supporting (but non-conducting) substrate, such as glass. This differs from the convention ...
s and other devices can be pattern
A pattern is a regularity in the world, in human-made design, or in abstract ideas. As such, the elements of a pattern repeat in a predictable manner. A geometric pattern is a kind of pattern formed of geometric shapes and typically repeated l ...
ed onto these large substrates, which can be up to a few metres wide and long. Some of the devices can be patterned directly, much like an inkjet printer deposits ink. For most semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping level ...
s, however, the devices must be patterned using photolithography
Photolithography (also known as optical lithography) is a process used in the manufacturing of integrated circuits. It involves using light to transfer a pattern onto a substrate, typically a silicon wafer.
The process begins with a photosensiti ...
techniques.
Roll-to-roll processing of large-area electronic devices reduces manufacturing cost. Most notable would be solar cell
A solar cell, also known as a photovoltaic cell (PV cell), is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by means of the photovoltaic effect.
s, which are still prohibitively expensive for most markets due to the high cost per unit area of traditional bulk (mono-
Numeral or number prefixes are prefixes derived from numerals or occasionally other numbers. In English and many other languages, they are used to coin numerous series of words. For example:
* triangle, quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon, oc ...
or polycrystalline) silicon manufacturing. Other applications could arise which take advantage of the flexible nature of the substrates, such as electronics embedded into clothing, large-area flexible displays, and roll-up portable displays.
LED (Light Emitting Diode)
* Inorganic LED - Flexible LED is commonly made into 25, 50, 100 m, or even longer strips using a roll-to-roll process. A long neon LED tube is using such a long flexible strip and encapsulated with PVC or silicone diffusing encapsulation. * Organic LED (OLED) - OLED for foldable phone screen is adopting roll-to-roll processing technology.Thin-film cells
A crucial issue for a roll-to-roll thin-film cell production system is the deposition rate of the microcrystalline layer, and this can be tackled using four approaches: *very high frequency plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition ( VHF- PECVD) *microwave ( MW)-PECVD *hot wire chemical vapour deposition (hot-wire CVD) *the use of ultrasonic nozzles in an in-line processIn electrochemical devices
Roll-to-roll processing has been used in the manufacture of electrochemical devices such as batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells, and water electrolyzers. Here, the roll-to-roll processing is utilized for electrode manufacturing and is the key to reducing manufacturing cost through stable production of electrodes on various film substrates such as metal foils, membranes, diffusion media, and separators.See also
* Amorphous silicon * Low cost solar cell * Printed electronics *Roll slitting
Roll slitting is a shearing (metalworking), shearing operation that cuts a large roll of material into narrower rolls. There are two types of slitting: log slitting and rewind slitting. In log slitting the roll of material is treated as a whole ...
*Rolling (metalworking)
In metalworking, rolling is a metal forming process in which metal stock is passed through one or more pairs of rolls to reduce the thickness, to make the thickness uniform, and/or to impart a desired mechanical property. The concept is simi ...
* Thin film solar cell
* Web manufacturing
* Tape automated bonding, TAB
References