Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (Fraunhofer IPMS) - Page 10

Update: here's a nice video (in German) showing the bidirectional OLED in action.

The Fraunhofer Institute announced their bidirectional OLED on CMOS microdisplay back in 2009. The idea is to have an OLED display and a camera on the same chip by integrating photodiodes between the OLED pixels. On March 22rd (at the Smart Systems Integration 2011 exhibition in Dresden, Germany) they will demo the system for the first time.

Fraunhofer's demo chip includes a monochrome AMOLED display (320x240) and a 160x120 monochrome camera. The brightness is 15,000 cd/m² and the chip size is 0.6" diagonal. They are also working on higher resolution displays (VGA and above) and small chip sizes (0.5").

Philips and the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) will co-develop a new process for OLED production - which aims to make OLEDs bigger and cheaper. The idea is to use a mask with micrometer slits on the surface of the ITO electrode, and then deposit a thin-film of aluminum (or copper or sliver) metal. A laser is finally used to melt the metal - unto the slits in the mask. The result - very fine and thin conductor paths (up to 40 micrometers).

Thin conductor on glass

The Fraunhofer say that this has already been achieved in the lab, and the next stage is to commercialize this together with Philips. The process might be ready within two or three years.

Last week, the Fraunhofer IPMS Institute unveiled new OLED lighting panels called TABOLA made at COMEDD. Those panels will come as either bottom-emitting or transparent, and today we got official word that these panels, including the transparent ones will indeed be available in Q1 2011.

LEDON OLED Lighting unveiled their first OLED Lighting products back in April 2009, and now we hear that the Luceos modules (which are based on OSRAM's ORBEOS panels) will start shipping next month (as engineering samples). Volume delivery is planned for the beginning of 2011 (LEDON obviously depends on OSRAM's production capacity).

LEDON says that the Luceos modules now include the driving electronics and the whole package is thinner than 4mm. They offer two dimming options: a pulse-width modulation and a complete DMX512 dimming, which should allow for a large-wall of elements setup that can easily address the brightness of each module.

Update: we've got a nice video of the TABOLA panels, and also official word that the transparent ones will be available in Q1 2011 as well.

The Fraunhofer IPMS Institute unveiled new OLED lighting panels called TABOLA (the full name is TABOLA OLED Light Tablets), set to be released in Q1 2011. These will be available in three sizes (35 x 75mm², 75 x 75mm² and 150 x 75 mm²), and can be made bottom emitting or transparent. The standard color will be white, but they can also make them in other colors. The tablets can also optionally come with a 'grid' - shaped like a Liana (a vine).

These will be sample panels: the idea is that customers can perform tests and sample designs. This is the same as we've seen from Philips, Osram and Lumiotec: these aren't real commercial panels. The TABOLA will be made at COMEDD, Fraunhofer's Organic Electronics production center in Dresden, Germany (on a Gen-2 production line, structured by screen printing).

Two days ago we reported about a new OLED lamp design by D Signed, called Lamped. The OLED panels were made by the Fraunhofer Institute. Irena Kilibarda (the designer behind the lamp) sent us the technical details.

The OLED panels are 106x50mm in size, with a 91.6x41.6mm active area. The brightness is 1000 cd/m2, the color is 2900K (soft white). On the foot of the lamp (that is made of molded stainless steel and is heavier than the rest of the lamp) there are dimmer controls.

D Signed, the Serbian design studio run by Irena Kilibarda is presenting a new modular OLED lamp design, called "Lamped", on which they worked on for over 2 years. The idea is to use OLED tiles that are joined with "ball joints" so you can move it all directions - and use it as a floor lamp, hanging lamp, desktop light, etc. They have demoed the lamp in Tent London (during the London Design Festival in September) with 12 OLED tiles (provided by the Fraunhofer Institute), but they say that the idea is that you can use as many tiles as you want.

We do not have any more information currently (update: we have now posted the OLED lamp's technical specs) but we do have a couple of more great photos:

The Fraunhofer-IPMS has released some new brochures about their various OLED projects. Check out these brochure (attached below this post) for technical details about the various OLED panels, future application ideas and more.

The first project is the HYPOLED project (High-Performance OLED-Microdisplays for Mobile Multimedia HMD and Projection Applications) - working towards VGA color OLED microdisplays for HMD (Head-Mounted-Displays) and pico-projectors. The HYPOLED project also developed a "MediaBox" for HMDs.

The Fraunhofer is going to show advances in OLED microdisplays at the 2010 Society for Information Display (SID) exhibition. The first is advances in their data-glasses, first shown back in 2009. These are using Bidirectional Microdisplays - an element that displays an image and acts as a camera at the same time by interleaving display pixels and photo detectors in a mosaic style. They are actually going to show a fully functional demonstrator. The integrated camera looks at the eye and records any change in the position of the eyeball. A subsequent image processing can distinguish between unconscious movements and the ones the user does by intent. The overall system can modify the content that is shown on the display according to the eye movements - and you get Augmented Reality.

Scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute have created a new nano-coating for glass-coated displays. They say that the new coating is completely reflection and glare free. It also makes it very scratch resistant. This can be a great solution for OLED displays in mobile phone that suffer from poor performance in the sun (although Super-AMOLED technology is a great step in that direction, too).>

Interestingly, they say that they got their insipiration from moths - which have non-reflective eyes...