In 2015 the EU launched a 3-year €4 million OLED lighting project, the LEO project (Low-cost / energy Efficient OLEDs) that had an aim to develop efficient and cost-effective bendable OLED lighting technologies. The project consortium included Osram, and Cynora.
A month before the project officially ends, the partners updated on their progress. For this project, the partners develops several technologies, including low-cost metal foils integrating OLED anodes and possibly backside monitoring printed circuits, smart OLED top-electrode architectures and light out-coupling solutions and a novel thin film top-encapsulation strategies. These technologies together increased the light output by 50% while providing better surface scratch resistance.
The project's OLED lighting panels use Cynora's TADF materials and a novel deposition technology that combines vacuum and wet deposition processes. The development was successful, and the final task for the project is to proceed to a full cost evaluation. The researchers estimate that the substrate cost was decreased by 50%, and so was the encapsulation layer's cost.
