UK's SmartKem, a developer of high-performance organic backplanes for flexible displays, has secured a €1.8 million EU grant to support the industrialisation and technology transfer of its semiconductor platform to display makers in Asia.
The 2-year project (which will total 2.65 million Euro, with a 850,000 Euro contribution from SmartKem itself) is called FLEXTRANS - and it will accelerate the adoption of organic semiconductors as a universal backplane platform for the mass manufacture of flexible and curved OLED and LCD displays. The project will focus on the industrialisation and transfer of the OTFT platform over large area plastic substrates using standard slit coat processing, while maintaining electrical and physical uniformity and quality of transistor performance.
In September 2015 Smarkem signed agreements with two "leading Asian display makers" to transfer SmartKem's OTFT tru-FLEX technology into production lines. It is these customers that have specified the requirements for this new project.
In 2014 SmartKem completed a 3 million Euro series A funding round from BASF Venture Capital, Octopus Investments, Entrepreneurs Fund and Finance Wales.
