Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (Fraunhofer IPMS) - Page 8

Last month during the Plastic Electronics 2012 conference Fraunhofer's COMEDD showed some interesting new OLED lighting prototypes. The most interesting prototype was an LCD display with OLED as a backlight unit (BLU).

This system is modular (made from small OLED panels tiled together), and because OLEDs do not require reflector and fiber optics it is much simple than LED or CCFL based LCDs. The OLED lighting panels also create a very comfortable and homogeneous light. OLED BLU units were discussed a few years ago, but they don't actually make a lot of sense. Currently OLED lighting panels are very expensive, but when prices drop, so will the prices of OLED displays...

Fraunhofer's COMEDD and POG Präzisionsoptik Gera have co-developed OLED structures coated in the range of micrometers at opaque or transparent glass substrates. This technology can be used in complex optical and opto-electronical systems in a range of applications (medical, laser, aerospace, telescopes, microscopes and even sports optics). Basically these are transparent optical devices with self-emitting figures, points or lines;

The best technology used today to achieve the same effect uses prisms. The advantage the new design is that the active luminous area is integrated directly into the glass substrate which results in a better field of view, and the whole system is much more simple - and hopefully will result in cheaper designs.

The three-year long NEMO (NEw Materials for OLEDs from solutions) project has been successfully concluded. Merck, the project's leader, says that the new soluble materials developed in the project can now be used in large-area OLED display and lighting panels. The new phosphorescent materials have an increased lifetime (200,000 hours for green) and efficiency (70 cd/A @ 1,000 cd/m²).

NEMO was a large €29 million project, co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project's scope included emitter materials, charge transport materials and new adhesives for reliable encapsulation of each OLED component. The partners also performed physical tests on the materials and on the OLED components in order to gain more in-depth knowledge for future material developments.

COMEDD published an interesting article detailing their current R2R research line. The vacuum deposition and fabrication of small-molecule OLEDs is made in the RC 300-MB roll-to-roll vacuum coater (supplied by Von Ardenne Anlagentechnik). This machine is capable of processing metal and plastic substrates (300 mm width). The article also details the encapsulation, inspection and defect-detection processes.

COMEDD (Center for Organic Materials and Electronic Devices) is now an independent Fraunhofer institute (it was established as a department in at the Fraunhofer IPMS originally). COMEDD's aim is to carry out customer R&D and pilot fabrication of vacuum-processed organic materials applications.

COMEDD is the Center for Organic Materials and Electronic Devices, based in Dresden. In 2009, COMEDD was established as a department in at the Fraunhofer IPMS, with an aim to carry out customer R&D and pilot fabrication of vacuum-processed organic materials applications. Three and a half years later, COMEDD is now an independent institute at Fraunhofer, no longer part of the IPMS.

The Fraunhofer COMEDD clean room consists of the following equipment:

• A pilot line for the fabrication of OLEDs on 370 x 470 mm² substrates
• Two pilot lines for 200 mm wafer for the OLED integration on silicon substrates
• A research line for the roll-to-roll fabrication on flexible substrates.

During SID, the Fraunhofer IPMS unveiled their bi-directional OLED microdisplay evaluation kit - which comes with a demo unit and software API so you can design your own application. The HMD is see-through and features eye-tracking, all of this from a single OLED device. The kit costs around €11,000 euro (almost $14,000).

The application they were demonstrating at SID showed a map of the world. If you looked in some directions, the map moved. I couldn't actually get this to work myself... but apparently this system works great for others, as they won the Best of Show at SID.

Update: Here's the complete list of OLED related posts and notes from SID 2012

So, SID 2012 is now over. Personally it was a very good show, even though I hear from many exhibitors that it was slow compared to past years. There were a lot of companies showing OLED displays, lighting panels and related products, and it seems that OLEDs are starting to become mainstream. I do plan to post in-depth posts with interesting details of my talks with various OLED companies, but in the meantime, here's my own "best of SID" list.

The Fraunhofer IPMS Institute developed an OLED microdisplay that emits light in the NIR light spectrum. They say that this has several applications such as higher penetration depths in human tissues in the photoplethysmography, in the photodynamic therapy or for invisible light barriers.

In the photo above you can see a bi-directional OLED microdisplay (a 0.6" QVGA, 320x240 one) that emits light in the NIR spectrum on the bottom right (and the visible spectrum in the rest of the panel). On the left it is photographed with a normal camera that has a NIR filter (so it does not record NIR light). On the right you see the same display photographed with a camera that has no NIR filter.

The Fraunhofer Institute has been showing their bi-directional OLED microdisplays for quite some time, and today they said that during SID 2012 they will unveil an evaluation kit of their see-through data eye-glasses for the first time. Fraunhofer's glasses are made from monochrome VGA bi-directional OLED microdisplays and use special eyetracking algorithms.

We don't have more technical details yet, but the 2011 demo unit inlcuded a monochrome AMOLED display (320x240) and a 160x120 monochrome camera. The brightness was 15,000 cd/m² and the chip size was 0.6" diagonal. Back then they said they are working on higher resolution displays (VGA and above) and smaller chip sizes (0.5"). So indeed the resolution is now higher (VGA).

Universal Display announced it will supply phosphorescent OLED materials to the Fraunhofer Institute which will use them to make efficient white OLED lighting panels. The two companies signed a two-year agreement under which COMEDD will develop and produce OLED panels "for market development". The upcoming panels will use UDC's all-phosphorescent solution.

The Fraunhofer is already producing and shipping OLED lighting panels, including structured and transparent ones (we posted our on-hands review just yesterday). The Fraunhofer does not plan to mass produce their panels, they are just meant to help interested people experiment with this exciting new technology. Of course in the future the Fraunhofer may license or spin-off its production technology.