KAIST, known as the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology in South Korea", has developed a new type of plastic film that is as hard as glass and as flexible as plastic. The smartphone screen is covered with a glass substrate to protect the screen from external shocks, and the glass is transparent and colorless, which does not affect the color rendering of the display. The problem is that glass substrates cannot be bent, break easily, and are not suitable for foldable smartphones.

In order to develop foldable mobile phones, the industry replaces the glass substrate with a transparent plastic film, but although the plastic film can be bent, it is not rigid enough to provide sufficient protection for the screen. Bae Byeong-soo, a professor in the Department of Advanced Materials Engineering at KAIST, announced that he has developed a flexible hard coating technology to solve this problem. Silicone polymers are glass-like in hardness and plastic-like in elasticity. They tested it with a monitor folded inward and found that the new material has a hardness of 9H and can be bent more than 200,000 times. The material could also be used for screens that fold out in half, he said.

 

Prior to this, Kolon Industries in South Korea has developed plastic films, which, together with KAIST's flexible hard coating technology, can strengthen the hardness of plastic films and accelerate the pace of commercial use of foldables.