The Organic LED penetration rate in the exterior automotive lighting market is anticipated to grow steadily. Among the various exterior automotive lighting applications, high/low beam headlamps are seeing the strongest growth because of technological improvements in high-power LEDs. This is slowly anticipated to change to Interior displays and dashboard lighting. The specialized optics are not required by the organic LEDs. This further contributes to the reduction of the overall weight of the vehicles, which also has a positive impact on the range and power usage.

To keep innovating and developing next-generation products, companies need necessary tools and components. Flexible electronics provides a designer with creative freedom in the development of flexible displays, photovoltaic cells, film transistors, ferroelectric transistor memory and others by removing the constraint of the form factor. In the automotive industry, the designers are creatively reinventing the display for interiors.

The stack can be made very thin by employing plastic substrate instead of glass. For large infotainment systems, weight and thickness are the important features which further provides sleekness to the device design. As consumers are comparing pocket devices with the infotainment system, plastic substrate for photovoltaic cells, film transistors, ferroelectric transistor memory will help the automakers to provide their users with same feel and fulfill their demand.

Transistors can be made of either organic or inorganic material, but to achieve flexibility, transistors need to be fabricated with organic materials such as plastic. Plastic substrate further allows for a stretchable and foldable design. This allows the automakers to reconsider their offerings with a foldable display. This will allow the user to remove the screen when not in use, further reducing distracted driving.

The materials used and processes employed for manufacturing organic and flexible electronics differ based on usage. For manufacturing over the small and large area substrate, roll to roll manufacturing is considered as the best solution. The production technique lowers the material waste and brings down the product cost.

Core components in devices such as OLEDs and organic PVs are highly sensitive to moisture and oxygen. The reaction leads to substantial degradation of the quality of the components and results in decreased performance and lifetime of the product. This ushers the need for high moisture barrier films. The encapsulation process is required to be compatible with a low-temperature process. This is because the substrate is normally plastic, which cannot withstand high temperatures. One of the major challenges is to make encapsulation transparent and flexible. Unless transparency is achieved, the performance of the product decreases, which is not desirable.