Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (Fraunhofer IPMS) - Page 3

Researchers at the Fraunhofer FEP institute developed a new wearable OLED-based "button" that can be integrated into textiles. The OLEDs can be designed in any shape, be transparent, dimmable and also patterned. There is also a two-color variant.

The Fraunhofer developers say that such elements can be used for fashion trends, branding, safety applications, light therapy and more. The so-called O-Button is based on an OLED deposited on a wafer-thin foil combined with a micro-controller on a conventional circuit board.

Researchers from the Fraunhofer FEP institute developed a new micro-patterning process using an electron beam to produce OLED microdisplays on silicon substrates. This could enable a new way to produce direct-emission OLED microdisplays, which will be more efficient and bright compared to the current ones that use color filters.

The electron beam patterning is performed after the encapsulation step - the beam goes through the encapsulation layer and can be used to modify the emission of the OLED materials. To create red, green, and blue pixels, an organic layer of the OLED itself is ablated by a thermal electron beam process.

In January 2015 the EU launched the LOMID project to develop next-generation large-area OLED microdisplays, and in 2017 the partners in the project announced the production of a 1-inch diagonal 1200x1920 (2,300 PPI) 120Hz curved OLED microdisplay.

The Fraunhofer FEP demonstrated this panel at SID 2018, as you can see in the video above. The institute also demonstrated a new design which uses two such panels and special optics to provide double the resolution for each eye.

The Fraunhofer FEP, together with VTT and the Holst Center developed a new wearable OLED lighting bracelet, one of the first one of the first flexible organic electronic product to be produced at the European PI-SCALE pilot production line.

The yellow and red OLED deposition in this prototype was performed at the Fraunhofer FPP (which can handle both sheet-to-sheet and roll-to-roll processes), while the barrier web was produced at the Holst Centre. VTT integrated the OLEDs into the bracelet. Such a bracelet, with its low power consumption, could be used as a security device, as a fashion jewelry, and more.

Ten Germany-based companies established a new OLED lighting alliance, called the "OLED Licht Forum" that aim to develop and promote OLED lighting technologies through dialogue and expert exchange. The forum will also organize conferences, lectures and institution visits.

The forum was founded by OLEDWorks, OSRAM, Merck, BASF coatings, EMDE, Fraunhofer, Hema electronic, Irlbacher, APEVA and WALO-TL. One of the first activities will be to create an OLED showroom in Germany that will be open to the public.

In January 2015 the EU launched a new project to develop next-generation large-area OLED microdisplays. The so-called LOMID (Large cost-effective OLED microdisplays and their applications) project's main goal is to produce 13x21 mm (~1-inch diagonal) 1200x1920 (2,300 PPI) 120Hz curved OLED microdisplay.

Dr. Uwe Fogel, the project's coordinator from the Fraunhofer FEP institute, updated today that the consortium managed to produce the first microdisplay samples at satisfactory yields, and it is now improving these yields. LOMID partners are already demonstrating the microdisplays in smart glasses for both VR and visually-impaired people.

The Fraunhofer FEP institute has successfully integrated its bi-directional OLED microdisplays into an VR / AR HMD (or dataglasses, as the Fraunhofer calls it) for 2D and 3D content.

The new HMD demonstrator uses the Fraunhofer's SVGA (800x600) displays and connects via a USB interface and an HDMI connection. The bi-directional displays can be used for eye tracking to support novel user interfaces.

The Fraunhofer FEP institute, in collaboration with Nippon Steel & Sumikin Materials (NSMAT) and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation (NSSMC), developed a new OLED lighting prototype that is made on a stainless steel substrate.

The researchers say that a stainless steel substrate has several advantages compared to glass or plastic - it has excellent thermal conductivity and excellent barrier properties. The lighting panel features an extremely homogenous OLED light, thanks to the planarization layer developed by NSSMC. The prototype panel was produced at the Fraunhofer's R2R research line.

Fraunhofer FEP and Sefar developed a roll-to-roll processed large-area flexible OLED lighting panels in a joint project. This achievement followed a batch-based flexible OLED panel demonstrated in early 2017.

The R2R process currently used enables Fraunhofer and Sefar to produce 30 cm wide OLEDs in lengths of up to 30 meters.

The Fraunhofer FEP institute in Germany first unveiled its bi-directional OLED microdisplays in 2012 with the novel idea of embedding photo detectors between the OLED pixels. Since then the instituted demonstrated its second-generation microdisplay that supported a resolution of 800x600 (SVGA), up from VGA in the first generation prototypes.

The Fraunhofer FEP now announced that it developed a new generation of these displays, that employ an extra-think encapsulation layer, which can turn these new displays into fingerprint sensors. The idea is that the OLED display illuminates the fingers and then the reflected light is used to detect and analyze the fingerprint with excellent accuracy.