Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (Fraunhofer IPMS) - Page 5

In October 2013, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) launched a new flexible OLED lighting project called R2D2 with an aim to investigate new production technologies, including roll-to-roll techniques.

R2D2's coordinator Fraunhofer FEP, now reports that the project has been successfully completed. OLED production processes and market sectors were thoroughly analyzed, the potential for improvement was identified and realized. The project partners developed a series of OLED lighting applications combining special design features with efficient fabrication techniques.

The Fraunhofer FEP announced new large-area flexible OLED lighting panel prototypes that have been fabricated on ultra-thin glass and encapsulated with a ultra-thin glass foil in the same process.

The new process developed at the Fraunhofer institute is able to deposit OLEDs on the flexible glass and encapsulation it using an additional flexible glass layer - all in a a single roll-to-roll manufacturing step.

The Fraunhofer FEP developed a new way to micro-pattern (structure) OLED lighting panels using electron beam. The idea is that you create a regular non-patterned OLED and after the encapsulation you use an electron beam that penetrates the encapsulation and changes the luminous characteristics of the organic layers beneath.

Depending on the application, it is even possible to modify individual layers directly. In their demonstration, the researchers showed it is possible to create gray scales in an image.The longer the dwell time on one spot with the beam, the darker the OLED will appear there.

The Fraunhofer FEP is demonstrating their new full-plastic OLED lighting panels at LOPEC 2016. In the video below, you can see Fraunhofer's new transparent flexible OLED tiles.

The most interesting demonstrator is the "night fly", which was developed as part of the Flex+ project. Those OLEDs (also flexible and transparent) are 0.3 mm thick and feature a new lime yellow emission color. The OLEDs in the "night fly" were processed on flexible substrates and finished graphically with screen-printing in a second step. The three-dimensional body of this fly is formed through a simple sticking together with an additional film. Extremely thin conductors are provided for electrical contacts that simultaneously serve as structural supports for the fly.

In 2012 the EU launched the TREASORES project (Transparent Electrodes for Large Area Large Scale Production of Organic Optoelectronic Devices) that aimed to develop technologies that will lower the production costs of organic electronic devices.

The Fraunhofer FEP now reports that the project concluded successfully and one of the results was the development of several new transparent electrode and barrier materials. The project partners developed electrodes based on carbon nanotubes, metal fibres or thin silver - and these electrodes (some of which are already mass produced) enabled the creation of the OLED lighting device you can see above.

The EU launched a new project, called, PI-SCALE, that aims to create a European-wide pilot line which will enable companies of all sizes to quickly and cost effectively test and scale up their flexible OLED lighting concepts and turn them into market ready products.

PI-SCALE will offer world class capability and services in the pilot production of customized flexible OLEDs and initially focuses on product streams in the areas of automotive, designer luminaires and aeronautics applications. The pilot line will be available during and after the lifetime of the project to companies on an open access basis, and the specialist infrastructure will include all the steps required to turn OLED lighting concepts into manufactured products.

Finding an alternative for ITO as a transparent electrode is one of the major flexible OLED challenges. A few days ago, The Faunhofer Institute FEP demonstrated an OLED device that has a graphene electrode, developed as part of project GLADIATOR.

The Fraunhofer developed the device in collaboration with Spain-based Graphenea, which supplied the CVD-produced monolayer graphene. Graphene-Info posted an interview with the project's coordinator who further explains the technology, why graphene is promising and what are the challenges that still has to be solved before graphene transparent electrodes can be commercialized.

The Faunhofer Institute FEP is going to demonstrate an OLED device that has a graphene electrode, developed as part of project GLADIATOR. The Fraunhofer developed the device in collaboration with Graphenea, which supplied the CVD-produced monolayer graphene.

This first demonstrator is a small OLED device. The partners in this project now aim to create a larger-sized OLED with an active area of 42 cm². They also plan to develop a fully-flexible transparent OLED, with an active area of 3 cm².

The Fraunhofer Institute has been developing bi-directional OLED microdisplays for years, and they now demonstrate their latest prototype that features an SVGA resolution - up from VGA in the previous prototype shown in 2012.

Besides the increased resolution, the new microdisplay also features a higher resolution image sensor and an enhanced color depth. Fraunhofer also integrated more components directly into the microdisplay chip, which will make integration easier.

Fraunhofer FEP's COMEDD developed new color-tunable transparent OLED lighting panels. These panels were presented at the LOPE-C exhibition last week, and they looked very nice.

According to the Fraunhofer color tunability is the most wanted feature (after flexibility) by lighting designers. The Fraunhofer uses a stacked approach (unlike Pioneer's stripe-pattered RGB-OLEDs, for example). A stacked approach enabled the Fraunhofer to make the panels both color-tunable and transparent - in any shape.