OLED projects

OLEDs is a complex technology - and an expensive one to research and develop. Because of this, there are several joint-venture OLED project - researching OLED displays and lighting. We provide here a comprehensive list of all projects related to OLEDs.

HARPOON

HARPOON is a research project funded in part by the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia. There is very little information available on HARPOON, but apparently it's aim is to improve OLED lighting's efficiency in a cost effective way. The researchers will use software simulation and develop algorithms that will optimize vacuum related production processes.

The project coordinator is Philips.

First results from the HARPOON project are expected by 2014.

Project duration: 
2012 - 2014

Clean4Yield

The Clean4Yield project aims to ensure high enough yields for cost-effective organic electronics manufacturing. The project partners will develop new technologies for inspecting, cleaning and repairing moving foils, and detecting and preventing defects in large-scale roll-to-roll production of OLEDs and OPVs.

The Clean4Yield project will work to develop new technologies capable of inspecting moving foils for micro- and nanoscale dust particles and defects, and for cleaning / repairing layers as necessary. It will also explore techniques for preventing dust particles reaching the foil in roll-to-roll environments. The project is coordinated by the Holst Centre/TNO and has sixteen members (multi-national companies, small-to-medium enterprises, universities and research organizations).

Clean4Yield is funded through the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) and will run for 36 months beginning May 1, 2012.

www.clean4yield.eu

Project duration: 
2012 - 2015

IM3OLED

IM3OLED logoThe IM3OLED (Integrated Multidisciplinary & Multiscale Modeling for OLEDs) is an international collaboration with the Russian Federation that aims to develop a software tool for multiscale OLED lighting modeling. The tool will enable a more systematic R&D process - which will accelerate efficient OLED design development.

The IM3OLED software will predictively model OLEDs in 3D and at all length scales – from molecular to large-area devices. It will include molecular calculations, electrical and optical simulation, 1D-3D light extraction and scaling / integration effects. It will also incorporate a dynamic feedback loop, enabling developers to accurately predict how changes in one area of OLED development affect other areas. This will allow multiple OLED properties to be optimized simultaneously.

IM3OLED brings together industrial and academic partners from across Europe and the Russian Federation and is coordinated by TNO/Holst Centre and by National Research Nuclear University MEPhI. Industrial partners include Philips, Fluxim and Kintech. Academic partners include leading computational physics and atomic / molecular modeling groups from the Zurich University of Applied Science (ZHAW) and Russian Academy of Sciences’ Photochemistry Center (PCC RAS).

The project is funded by the EU through the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7NMP Grant no 295368), and the EU portion of the IM3OLED project will run for 30 months until late 2013.

IM3OLED's web site

Project duration: 
2012 - 2013

COLAE

COLAE logoThe COLAE (Commercializing Organic and Large Area Electronics) is a pan-European initiative that aims to promote commercialization of Organic and large-area electronics in Europe. There are 18 partners from 12 countries.

The COLAE partners will jointly develop technology demonstrators and organize training events. As part of the project, the partners will offer several services such as technology feasibility analyses, access to the partners' pilot production facilities, business planning and networking.

COLAE is funded by the EU, and is coordinated by the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Other partners include the Fraunhofer InstituteCSEM and UK's CPI center which will provide access for its OLED lighting pilot line facilities. 

COLAE's web page

Project duration: 
2011 - 2014

IMOLA

The four year IMOLA (Intelligent light management for OLED on foil applications) project aims to realize large-area OLED lighting modules with built-in intelligent light management. The idea is that light intensity can be adjusted uniformly or locally according to the time of day or a person's position - and applications include wall, ceiling and in-vehicle (dome) lighting.

The project purposes that the OLED lighting module will consists of OLED tiles on a flexible backplane foil. Each tile can be individually controlled via the backplane. The intelligent part comes from a smart-power thin chip, advanced communication features and optical feedback.

Partners in this project include Philips, NXP Semiconductors, Henkel and Israel's Hanita Coatings. The total budget in this project is €5.1 million.

Project duration: 
2011 - 2014

Emerging Market OLED (EMO) project

EMO (Emerging Market OLED) is a three year project that aims research, develop and eventually produce OLED lighting panels targeting emerging markets in Brazil. This project is a collaboration by Philips and the CERTI Foundation (Reference Center in Innovative Technologies).

Project duration: 
2010 - 2013

ROLLEX 2

ROLLEX 2 is a follow up to the original ROLLEX project (which will end April 2010). ROLLEX stands for Roll-to-roll production of highly efficient light-emitting diodes on flexible substrates. The major goal of ROLLEX 2 will be to further integrate the processing steps used to make flexible OLED lighting devices in the current ROLLEX project, which ends next month. ROLLEX 2 will also work on flexible organic solar cells.

The project is funded by two of Fraunhofer's institutes and Dresden's technical university. There are more partners, including Philips and Novaled, and they expect at least one new industry partner to join the project.

Project duration: 
2010 - 2012

TOPDRAWER

TOPDRAWER (Thin organic prototypes, design, research, applications with end-user recognition) will develop and demonstrate a printed manufacturing process that will be integrated into attractive designs that have been created through consultation with potential end-users. The manufacturing process will be proved and tested within PETEC, that will acquire and install a large-area coating line.

TOPDRAWER has secured funding from the UK government, and will start in early November and will run for 2.5 years. This is actually a followup project to TOPLESS, and is also lead by Thorn lighting.

The partners in this project include CDT, Thorn lighting, Tridonic, which makes drivers for luminaires, Pilkington (a glass maker) and Conductive Inkjet Technology (CIT).

Project duration: 
2010 - 2013

NEMO

NEMO (NEw Materials for OLEDs) is an EU project focusing on new emitting systems based on soluble small molecules with long lifetime and efficiency. NEMO is led be four companies (coordinated by Merck) and seven research and academic institutions (including the Fraunhofer institute). The project is scheduled to last for 2.5 years, and is funded by the German government with 32 million euros.

The project will use a multi-layer OLED architecture: glass coating with indium stannic oxide as charge carrier injection layer.

Here's more information over at Merck's site

Project duration: 
2009 - 2012

So-Light

So-Light is a German project that aims to develop OLED displays and lighting applications - including new materials (transport materials, redox dopants, triplet-emitters, matrix materials), new optical technologies for guided light distribution, characterizing lighting application aspects of OLEDs and process technologies for Small Molecule OLEDs. So-Light will also generate studies on applications and demonstrators, and will also work on integrating technologies for application areas such as automotive, architecture and backlight units for large displays).

The project's cost is 14.7 Million Euro, and is supported by the German BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research).

So-Light project partners are: Novaled AG (Dresden), Sensient Imaging Technologies GmbH (Bitterfeld-Wolfen), Fraunhofer IPMS (Dresden), LEDON OLED Lighting GmbH & Co. KG (Dresden), Aixtron AG (Aachen), Fresnel Optics GmbH (Apolda), Hella KGaA Hueck & Co (Lippstadt), Siteco Beleuchtungstechnik GmbH (Traunreut), AEG-MIS mbH (Ulm), Universität Paderborn/L-LAB (Paderborn) and the Westfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster (Münster).

Project duration: 
2009 - 2012

TOPAS project

The TOPAS (Thousand Lumen Organic Phosphorescent devices for Applications in lighting Systems) research project is focused on developing innovative material and component architectures and well as new production machines for lighting solutions with highly efficient OLEDs. Within the project group OSRAM Opto Semiconductors is focusing on a transparent OLED solution with an area of 1 square meter. Philips is concentrating on developing particularly bright monolithic OLED systems with 1000 Lumen, and AIXTRON is working on production equipment with high-grade deposition concepts based on its OVPD

The project is funded by the Germany Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) with OSRAM, BASF, Philips and Aixtron all working together.

In October 2009, OSRAM displayed a large transparent OLED (17x17 cm2, with a 210cm2 luminous area), which is only a few hundred micrometers thick. The samples have been developed as part of the TOPAS project.

Project duration: 
2009 - 2014

LILi project

LILi project logoLILi (Light InLine) is a 3-year project started at July 2009 with an aim to develop processes to lower the cost of manufacturing large-area and efficient OLED Lighting for general illumination applications.. The partners are Merck, Applied Materials and the Braunschweig University of Technology.

The total cost of the project is about 7.5 million euros (just over $11 million). Almost half is provided by the German government, and the rest by the companies themselves.

Project duration: 
2009 - 2011

One-P

ONE-P (Organic Nanomaterials for Electronics and Photonics: Design, Synthesis, Characterisation, Processing, Fabrication and Applications) is a collaboration of 28 organizations, funded mostly by the EU Commission 7th framework programme (18M euro out of 26M). 

The project has several objectives in the area of organic semiconductors. One of them is the development of a new generation of light emitter materials for OLED architectures and light-emitting field-effects transistors.

One-P's web site

Project duration: 
2009 - 2012

Fast2Light

Fast2Light logo Fast2Light is an integrated (9 companies, 3 research institutes and 2 universities) R&D project that aims to research and develop light emitting foils based on OLED tech. The overall objective of Fast2Light is to develop novel, cost-effective, high-throughput, roll-to-roll, large area deposition processes for fabricating light-emitting polymer-OLED foils for intelligent lighting applications.

All layers that are part of a large area lighting foil will be addressed starting with the substrate choice, and introducing high-throughput deposition and patterning methods for all of the materials necessary to fabricate the final lighting foil. Ultimately, the project will demonstrate a 30cm x 30cm, high quality lighting foil, manufactured with new optimised, disruptive R2R processes. While the project will focus on polymers, the platforms developed will be fully compatible with SMOLEDs. 

The project also aims to minimize the potential environmental impact at this product design stage, as well as analyse in depth the repercussions throughout the life cycle, including the end of useful life stage.

In April 2008, we interviewed the Project's manager, Mary Kilitziraki.

Fast2Light's web page

Project duration: 
2008

HYPOLED project

Hypoled logoHypoled - High-Performance OLED-Microdisplays for Mobile Multimedia HMD and Projection Applications, is a joint project lead by the Fraunhofer IPMS. The other partner was MED, which recently went bankcrupt, and they have now partnered with MicroOLED instead.

Hypoled OLED microdisplayHypoled OLED microdisplay

Hypoled's targets:

  • High resolution (VGA)
  • High Brightness (up to 10000nits)
  • Low power (estimate <100mW@100nits P-OLED, <300mW @1000nits PIN-OLED)
  • Low voltage operation
  • True color (24 bit)
  • Small pixel size (»12µm)

In October 2009, HYPOLED released some intermediate results, and in SID 2010 they'll show the project's results.

Hypoled's web site

Project duration: 
2008 - 2009

Project TOPLESS (Thin Organic Polymeric Light Emitting Semi-conductor Surfaces)

Project TOPLESS (Thin Organic Polymeric Light Emitting Semi-conductor Surfaces) is a three year £3.3M project,  sponsored by the UK government (50%). It comprises a consortium of Thorn Lighting (UK largest lighting company), Sumation UK and the University of Durham (Department of Physics and Chemistry).

The aim of the project is to product a high quality white light generating single polymer, and efficient large area single pixel device architectures.

TOPLESS project OLED lamp prototype 2008TOPLESS project OLED lamp prototype 2008
TOPLESS objectives:
  • An efficacy of 20Lm per watt
  • Colour temperature suitable for general white light applications (this varies according to customer requirements) between 2,700K to 17,000K.
  • Large single pixel devices (no buzz bars)
  • Minimal number of organic layers

TOPLESS will run till February 2010. In June 2008 we interviewed Dr. Geoff Williams, the project manager.

In December 2008, TOPLESS showed a prototype lamp. The efficiency is about 17Lm/W (as there is no out-coupling. With out-coupling the efficiency is over 30Lm/W), each panel operating at 3W. The panels are just 0.7mm thick, made by Sumation with TOPLESS materials

Project duration: 
2008 - 2010

Aeviom (Advanced Experimentally Validated OLED model)

Aevium logoAEVIOM (Advanced Experimentally Validated OLED model) is a 3-year collaboration between leading academic and industrial groups in Europe. The project aims at enabling a breakthrough in white OLED efficiency and lifetime by the development and application of an integrated "second-generation" OLED model.

The model will be the basis for efficient numerical methods that properly include the entire chain of electrical and optical effects inside the disordered organic semiconductor material, as well as the optical outcoupling.

Aeviom's web site

Project duration: 
2008 - 2011

ROLLEX

ROLLEX means Roll-to-roll production of highly efficient light-emitting diodes on flexible substrates. The project members (Franhofer Institute, Novaled, Philips and others) developed ways to make flexible OLED lighting devices using roll-to-roll printing technologies.

The project was completed on April 2010, and the companies has announced a follow-up project (ROLLEX 2).

Project duration: 
2008 - 2010

CombOLED

CombOLED logoThe goal of the CombOLED project, a European funded research and development project, is to combine new device structures, advantageous manufacturing approaches and less complex materials with the aim to achieve cost effective OLED lighting solutions. The cost reduction, together with transparency as a device feature, will enable a huge penetration of the organic light-emitting device (OLED) technology into the lighting market. The project is lead by OSRAM Opto  Semiconductors.

CombOLED has recently shown a transparent, white OLED prototype (5x5 cm2). 

CombOLED also sponsored an OLED lighting design contest.

CombOLED's web page

Project duration: 
2008 - 2011

FLAME

FLAME project logoThe FLAME (Flexible Organic Active Matrix OLED displays for Nomadic Applications) was a EU project funded under the 7th FWP. The aim of this project was to research the materials, processing technology (including encapsulation) and substrate handling procedures to make OLEDs on very thin plastic foils and driven by organic thin-film driving transistors.

Partners include Polymer Vision, Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystem, imec and TNO. The project cost €4.11 million (out of which the EU contributed €3 million) and was completed in June 2011.

Project duration: 
2008 - 2011
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