"Since the early 2000's there has been an explosion in interest in printed electronics and flexible displays both in terms of exploring the potential to develop new business opportunities and also in terms of developing the technology base. The opportunity to exploit flexible substrates in R2R production has been one that has excited the interest of the plastic films and associated processing and coating industries. To replace a rigid substrate such as glass however, a plastic substrate needs to be able to offer some or all of the properties of glass ie clarity, dimensional stability, thermal stability, barrier, solvent resistance, low coefficient of thermal expansion (CLTE) coupled with a smooth surface. In addition a further functionality such as a conductive layer might be required. No plastic film offers all these properties so any plastic based substrate replacing glass will almost certainly be a multilayer composite structure1,2,3. Not all applications however require such a demanding property set and over the past decade plastic films have found application in areas broader than the flexible OLED displays initially envisaged in the early days of the technology development. These include applications such as electrophoretic displays driven by TFT arrays printed on plastic film, printed memory and sensors. In addition there has been a smearing of the boundary between flexible devices and the use of printed electronics and or flexible substrates in rigid devices an example being the use of conductive films in touchscreens incorporated into smart phones and tablets."-- Provided by publisher.