Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (Fraunhofer IPMS) - Page 7

Merck participated in the Lightopia exhibition last month, and they showed a mock laboratory that displayed new lighting technologies - including three Tabola OLED lighting panels (made by Fraunhofer's COMEDD) and confirmed that the panels use Merck's materials.

This exhibition will be on display at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, and will later go on tour to other museums around the world. It also features BlackBody's I.RAIN chandelier, which you can see in the photo below in the background.

The 2.5-years 11 million Euro R2Flex project recently concluded. The project, which aimed to develop new technologies for efficient and affordable flexible OLEDs manufactured using a roll-to-roll (R2R) process, presented a flexible OLED desk luminaire prototype. It uses two OLED lighting panels, produced at COMEDD and serially connected via flexible contacting.

The flexible OLED panel was produced on a metal foil. Metal was chosen because it is a cost-effective substrate as one of the key goals in the project was lowering the production cost of OLEDs.

The EU-funded ManuCloud (distributed Cloud product specification and supply chain manufacturing execution infrastructure) project was successfully completed, and the partners (Fraunhofer COMEDD, Heliatek, Tridonic Dresden and others) presented a demonstrator of a "facade module" which includes OLED lighting and OPV panels. The ManuCloud project envisions a cloud-like architecture concept, providing users with the ability to utilize the manufacturing capabilities of configurable, virtualized production networks.

The objective of the ManuCloud project was the development of a service-oriented IT environment as basis for the next level of manufacturing networks by enabling production-related inter-enterprise integration down to shop floor level. The EU considers the transition from mass production to personalized, customer-oriented and eco-efficient manufacturing to be a promising approach that may improve and secure the competitiveness of the European manufacturing industries.

In October 2009 the Zumtobel group and the Fraunhofer Institute established a new OLED lighting company called LEDON OLED lighting to develop and manufacture OLED lighting modules. Today Zumtobel announced it is acquiring its partner shares in the company and renaming it Tridonic Dresden.

Tridonic LUREON REP module

LEDON's products were already marketed under the Tridonic brand (which is Zumbotel group's lighting components business). Managing directors Jörg Amelung and Patrik Danz will continue to head the company which currently employs 11 people.

In July 2012 the COMEDD was established as an independent institute at Fraunhofer (previously it was a department at the Fraunhofer IPMS). In April 2013 they held the opening ceremony. Since then they announced several new OLED technologies which I'll update on below.

My COMEDD friends sent me this video you see above of the opening ceremony laser show. I wasn't sure whether I should publish it, but the choice of sound track convinced me to do so - especially Hans Zimmer's Pirates of The Caribbean bit, I love that music. So enjoy...

Fraunhofer's COMEDD developed new color tunable OLED lighting panels. These new panels will be presented at the LOPE-C 2013 exhibition (June 11) for the first time. To develop these new panels, the Fraunhofer used vertical stacking of OLED emitters which can be controlled separately.

They say that by using different process technology, COMEDD was able to achieve the right stack architecture including the optimized thickness of the individual OLEDs for an appropriate efficacy.

Researchers from the Fraunhofer COMEDD Institute in collaboration with Von Ardenne Anlagentechnik are developing new direct-emission OLED microdisplays. These new displays will be more efficient and cheaper than Fraunhofer's current microdisplays which use color filters.

Fraunhofer uses Von Ardenne's flash-mask-transfer-lithography (FMTL) technology. The FMTL-technology works with special transfer masks. Organic layers are locally deposited through the masks via thermal heat input and transferred to the microdisplay. This process needed a complete redesign to suit OLED deposition.

Beneq announced that together with Fraunhofer's COMEDD, they have developed a new R&D thin film ALD encapsulation system for 200×200 mm OLED and OPV substrates. This system is now available - and in a few months they will deliver the first one to COMEDD.

The new encapsulation system is based on a cross-flow reactor, which has been optimized for the shortest possible cycle time, even at low processing temperatures, such as under 100 Celsius. This allows for rapid OLED prototyping and enables process scale-up for large areas and high throughput. Beneq's new system can be used as a stand-alone system, and it can also be integrated with an MBraun glove box.

Fraunhofer COMEDD installed a new cluster system in their production line for the processing of 8" wafers. This upgrade of the pilot line offers a wide range of processes, including evaporation of organic and inorganic materials, metal evaporation, electron beam evaporation and high quality thin-film encapsulation). COMEDD's new line was made by SNU Precision. This new line will be especially useful for research on OLED microdisplays in interactive data eyeglasses and future integrated OLED-on-Silicon opto-sensors

COMEDD was established in 2009 as a department in at the Fraunhofer IPMS, but it is now an independent institute at Fraunhofer. Two days ago (on April 9) they conducted the official opening ceremony of the new institute. Congratulations guys!

The Fraunhofer's COMEDD published a new video explaining all about COMEDD and its activities and the OLED production process. The video focuses on OLED Lighting and shows the institute's transparent TABOLA panels (which we reviewed back in April):