Fraunhofer IAP - Page 6

Today's personal OLED interview features Dr. Uwe Vogel from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.If you wish to be featured on such interview, contact us here.

Dr. Uwe Vogel, Head of Division Microdisplays & Sensors, Deputy Director, Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP, Dresden, Germany

What was the last book you read? OLED Microdisplays, Technology and Applications, Edited by Francois Templier, 2014 (though I am NO author there ;o)

Researchers at the Fraunhofer FEP Institute demonstrated new UV-emitting OLED devices that can be used as low-cost personal diagnostic devices. The German research institute demonstrated two OLED devices, one emitting in the near-UV and another in the green spectral range. Both can be integrated to sensor applications.

The Fraunhofer showed sample sensors that integrate both the OLED deices and photo-detectors with tunable spectral characteristics. The green OLED is a top-emitting OLED that has a thin-film optical filter and thin-film encapsulation - so that a sample substrate can be brought to be very close to the excitation source.

In October 2013, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) launched a new flexible OLED lighting project called R2D2. This two-year 5.9 million Euro project, which was finally exposed now, aims to investigate new production technologies, including roll-to-roll techniques. One of the main subjects of investigation will be the system integration of flexible OLEDs in automobiles, aircraft and household applications.

The project is based on results from previous BMBF projects - R2Flex, So-Light and TOPAS2012. The consortium leader is Fraunhofer FEP, and other partners include OSRAM, Novaled, Audi, Hella, and others.

Market research company TechSci released a new report in which they forecast fast growth (41% CAGR) in the next five years for the global pico projector market. Currently most pico projectors used DLP and LCoS microdisplays, but in the future laser-based projectors will be common, and in addition OLED technology will also play a "significant role" in revolutionizing the pico projector market over the next five years.

This is really interesting. While OLEDs for pico projectors were discussed in the past, the only real activity we're aware towards such a solution was a EU projector called HYPOLED back in 2008. That project, led by the Fraunhofer Institute, developed a VGA full-color OLED microdisplay coupled with pico-projector optics. Originally MED supplied the microdisplays, but the company went bankcrupt and they continued the work with MicroOLED.

In 2009, Fraunhofer's COMEDD (Center for Organic Materials and Electronic Devices) was established as a department of the Fraunhofer IPMS. Two years ago in July 2012 COMEDD was turned into an independent Fraunhofer Institute. Today we hear that COMEDD is merging with the Fraunhofer's FEP (Electron Beam, Plasma Technology) to become COMEDD FEP.

The director of the new institute, Prof. Volker Kirchhoff, is looking forward for "significant advances", especially in the area of barrier films for flexible organic components and OLED-based microdisplays. Fraunhofer FEP expertise was in processes and equipment in electron beam and plasma technology, whereas COMEDD was focused on organic semiconductors and device development.

Fraunhofer COMEDD is looking to advance flexible OLED lighting device lifetime, and towards that goal the German institute developed flexible OLED lighting panels on flexible glass substrates. COMEDD reports that flexible glass can enable curved panels that has high OLED lifetime - much higher than can be obtained with polymer-based encapsulation and substrate technologies.

Fraunhofer developed those new panels on their own Roll-to-Roll R&D line in collaboration with Von Ardenne (on the development of process equipment) and Nippon Electric Glass (they provided the "G-Leaf" flexible glass rolls). The G-Leaf glass is less than 35 um thick and can be used in roll-to-roll processes.

Fraunhofer COMEDD collaborated with Orthogonal Inc to develop a new approach for OLED micro-structuring. The new patented technology, called Orthogonal Photolithography allows direct patterning of organic material on CMOS-backplanes.

This technology can enable high-brightness (5000 cd/m²) high-resolution OLED microdisplays. This is because it can be used to create direct-emission OLED microdisplays. All current microdipslays on the market use white OLED subpixels with color filters. Fraunhofer is also developing direct-emission OLED microdisplays using flash-mask-transfer-lithography (FMTL) technology.

The 3-year German project IMAGE (innovation printable electrode materials for high performance OLEDs and OPVs) has been successfully completed. The project partners (which include Fraunhofer COMEDD and Carnot MIB) demonstrated novel organic transparent electrodes, which are arranged on a backing film and enable flexible electronic components.

The performance of these electrodes was demonstrated using flexible OLEDs and OPVs. COMEDD explains that new electrodes could replace conventional transparent metal oxides, such as ITO - which is less cost effective and less flexible. COMEDD can now manufacture flexible organic devices using the new electrodes, and the project partners are looking for industry partners to commercialize this technology.

Researchers from the Fraunhofer IAP insitute, together with MBraun, developed a new production facility that can be used to print OLED panels and OPV cells. They say that the new system can be used to produce large sample panels. The Fraunhofer showed the "bus stop of the future" that includes both large OPVs and OLED displays:

The Fraunhofer released very little technical details. I think this process actually produces very large OLED (or OPV) pixels , so you can think of these as OLED lighting panels and not really displays. The researchers said that the system includes a robot that controls different printers - and this all is like a "huge" ink-jet printer.

Researchers from TU Dresden and Fraunhofer COMEDD are developing OLED lighting based bio-reactors that will be used to cultivate micro-algea that will help absorb CO₂ using photosynthesis.

Those micro algae (or phototropic microorganisms) can transform carbon dioxide (CO₂) into useful products such as proteins, dyes and other substances. OLED lighting may prove to enable a more effective process by providing the necessary lighting energy.