Our Flexible Platform

With liviFlex™, we are offering a novel range of display materials that addresses challenges in the manufacture of flexible, foldable and rollable OLED displays, which are known as free-form displays.

THE FREE-FORM TREND

Alongside high resolution and energy efficiency, design freedom, immersiveness and interactivity are key market trends and needs in the display industry. Flexible solutions for new OLED display designs are serving the free-form trend by providing clear user benefits and supporting the highest growth rates in the OLED display industry.

  • Display Variant 1
  • Display Variant 2
  • Display Variant 4
  • Display Variant 6
  • Display Variant 7
  • Display Variant 9

THE CHALLENGE OF FREE-FORM FACTORS

Contrary to the flat, rectangular shape of standard displays, free-form OLED displays offer custom shapes and novel design features with surfaces that can be bent, folded, stretched, or rolled. To enable these properties, the display materials in these devices must be thin yet robust to prevent display stress caused by continuous folding and rolling. Compared to standard displays, free-form OLED screens require the display module to be about 60% thinner.

  • reduced thickness

    The display thickness will need to be reduced
  • robustness

    Existing material systems will be challenged – robustness under deformation is essential
  • whole system

    The performance of the whole system is key – not individual components
Device design: Rigid vs free-form

Our FREE-FORM SOLUTIONS

To address the key design trend of foldable, rollable and stretchable displays as well as to drive the innovative solutions required, we have developed a new portfolio of products: liviFlex™ – our flexible platform.

Display layouts need to be thinner yet robust under deformation without impacting performance in order to enable the free-form factor. With these parameters in mind, the liviFlex™ portfolio has been created to offer a set of new solutions that operate in unison in the device.

In introducing the liviFlex™ portfolio of products, we are maintaining our leadership in display materials and striving to serve key trends in the display industry.  

Michael Heckmeier Michael Heckmeier

Free-form devices are one of the fastest-growing trends in data-driven electronics. We are excited to bring our first liviFlex™ products to the market and look forward to further tapping into this exciting field of free-form displays, which serves the market requirement to develop robust and reliable solutions for our display customers.

Michael Heckmeier

Head of the Display Solutions business unit of EMD Electronics

The liviFlex™ platform
Solutions to key issues of foldable and rollable displays

outlook – There is more to come

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany offers certified OLED materials for commercial products and strives to help advance such devices through new market solutions. liviFlex™ aims to cover market solutions that require highly innovative and engineered solutions to enable free-form displays. liviFlex™ focuses on key functional layers in the display layout, including, but not limited to, cover films, ultrathin polarizers and organic encapsulation layers.