The National Center for Flexible Electronics (FlexE) was established in 2014 as a Centre of Excellence at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kanpur. The vision of the center is to "catalyse the development of domestic industry in the field of large area flexible electronics".
The FlexE center has some interesting OLED projects, and we recently had a discussion with researchers from the center to learn more about the OLED R&D activities.
So first of all some background information. The FlexE center is housed in a building with approximately 5,000 m2 floor space which includes 750 m2 cleanroom, processing, characterization and system integration laboratories. The infrastructure includes state-of-the art processing tools covering both vacuum and printing technologies.
These tools are used to develop both evaporated and printed OLED technologies for different applications. The FlexE center has a R&D cluster tool for fabrication of evaporated OLEDs and sheet to sheet printing facilities for process development and prototyping. A state of the art pilot scale roll-to roll (R2R) line has been installed and is fully functional.
Using printing technologies, researchers at the FlexE center develop dot matrix displays, and also flexible panels. All of the center's current printed OLED displays are monochrome. With evaporation technologies, the researchers created both PMOLED displays and white OLED lighting panels.
In the OLED lighting part, FlexE researchers have recently demonstrated a 0.1-mm thin flexible panel produced on flexible glass. They have also shown a complete table lamp prototype.
In the PMOLED project, researchers have developed two displays, 1-inch (96x64) and 1.5-inch (128x128) prototype panels. These are full-color displays that feature a brightness of 100-200 nits and a contrast of 3,000:1. The researchers are now working on transferring this technology to flexible substrates.
In the printed OLED project, the researchers have shown seven-segment inkjet-printed displays produced on plastic substrates. Several prototype application demonstrators (such as a business card with an embedded display) have been developed.
Finally the researchers are also developing automotive OLED panels, including the cluster display for two wheelers you see above.
