Follow up flexible OLED project slated for June start

Sara Ver-Bruggen - 16 Apr 2010

Two Dresden-based Fraunhofer institutes and the city's technical university aim to continue funded R&D into flexible OLEDs in a new project starting in June.

The follow up to ROLLEX (Roll-to-roll production of highly efficient light-emitting diodes on flexible substrates) will run for two years.

At least one new industry partner, potentially from lighting or another market, is expected to join the project to help guide the development of organic electronic devices fabricated on flexible substrates.

A key aim of ROLLEX II will be to focus on further integrating the processing steps used to make flexible OLED lighting devices in the current ROLLEX project, which ends next month.

Recently ROLLEX researchers from Fraunhofer's Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS and Institute for Electron Beam and Plasma Coating FEP - made a flexible OLED on roll-to-roll (R2R) machinery for the first time. They also encapsulated the device in a subsequent inline-process, which has the potential to be scaled up so that production of flexible OLEDs can happen in a single plant.

Machinery

Researchers deposited the OLED materials on a cheap aluminium foil, encapsulating the luminescent foil with a barrier layer, patented by Fraunhofer FEP, without compromising the device's luminosity.

Christian May, head of the business unit for organic materials and systems at Fraunhofer IPMS, says that while ROLLEX saw the installation and exploitation of R2R deposition equipment, within the institute's specialist Centre for Organic Materials and Electronic Devices Dresden (COMEDD), further machines will be installed for ROLLEX II. Both metal and plastic substrates will be used in the project in order to establish how to make flexible OLED devices economically.

ROLLEX II partners are seeking funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which funded ROLLEX.

The ROLLEX partners, which also include Philips and Novaled, do not intend to publicise details on the performance of the OLED prototypes made within the project, which is low compared with other panels, as the main aim of the project is to establish whether entire devices can be made on an R2R process inline.

As well as furthering work on flexible OLED devices, ROLLEX II will also turn its attention to R&D on flexible organic solar cells, potentially working with Heliatek, a Dresden-based spin-out from the Technical University Dresden.