France-based specialty chemicals producer PCAS announced that it plans to invest $8 million in the next few years to significantly increase its production capacity of electronic materials. Half of that investment is dedicated to the organic electronics field.

PCAS is targeting the OLED, OPV, O-FET and sensor markets. The added capacity will mostly be installed at the company's Canadian plant (located in Saint-Jean, Quebec). PCAS offers evaporable small molecule, transparent electrode materials, conductive polymers and smart luminescent polymers.

Novaled has started constructing its new 20 million Euro fab and office buildings. The new facility will be located in the north of Dresden, and will comprise of a renovated old mill that will be turned into a prestigious office building and a new 110-meter long R&D plant with state-of-the-art research areas, laboratories and clean rooms.

Novaled says it is the world's only supplier of organic dopants for mass produced OLED displays - and also in OLED lighting panels. Novaled's materials are also used in OPV devices.

Researchers from Japan developed a new method that can be used to change the color and fluorescence of compounds using oxygen and hydrogen gases. This is a reversible method that is environmentally friendly. The technique can find applications in sensors and control of organic semiconductors and OLED devices.

The researchers explain that they were able to perform a molecular switch in aromatic compounds that are commonly used in OLEDs, OPVs and other applications. The switch was performed using an orthoquinone moiety.

Researchers at the Swedish Umea University have shown that if you place semiconductors polymers on a layer of graphene, they transport electrical charges more efficiently than when the polymers are placed on a silicon substrate.

This discovery means that graphene can enable more efficient charge transport in organic electronics such as OLEDs or OPVs.

Germany-based AIXTRON is a leading deposition equipment provider for the semiconductor industries - used for a wide range of applications, from LED to graphene deposition. For the OLED market, Aixtron is offering Organic Vapor Phase Deposition (OVPD) equipment (which was exclusively licensed to AIXTRON by Universal Display).

Juergen Kreis, AIXTRON's Director Business Development, was kind enough to update us on Aixtron's OLED business and answer a few questions we had on the company's technology. Juergen joined AIXTRON in 2010 as Director Business Development with special focus on the portfolio for organic material deposition solutions.

Q: Hello Juergen. Can you give us a short introduction to AIXTRON's OLED related products and services?

AIXTRON’s core expertise clearly is in the offering of proprietary process solutions for the deposition of organic thin-films, with OVPD (Organic Vapor Phase Deposition) and PVPD (Polymer Vapor Phase Deposition) being the core process technologies. As the fabrication of organic electronics requires many manufacturing steps, flawless integration of the respective processes into an automated material flow is essential.

Switzerland based Fluxim, providing leading simulation and measurement technology to the OLED and solar cell industry, announces two product releases and two training events. Following is a sponsored message from Fluxim.

Fluxim is Launching SETFOS 4.0 with a New Light Scattering Module for Assessing the OLED Light Outcoupling Enhancement

After extended development and testing effort, Fluxim is going to release a new module of the simulator SETFOS in the beginning of June 2014 to simulate light scattering in OLEDs and solar cells. Fluxim believes that their customers can strongly take advantage from this major improvement as the new module makes it easy to quantify the impact of light outcoupling enhancement structures. Please write to info@fluxim.com to obtain further information today.

BASF and the Graphene Research Centre (GRC) at the National University of Singapore announced a new partnership to develop the use of graphene in organic electronics devices - such as OLED devices and OPVs. The goal of this collaboration is to interface graphene films with organic electronic materials, with an aim to create more efficient and flexible lighting devices.

In this collaboration, the GRC will contribute its graphene knowledge (the synthesis and characterization of the graphene) while BASF is focused on organic materials. Of course BASF is also engaged with graphene research (for several years) and are looking to speed up their device development with this new partnership.

The 3-year German project IMAGE (innovation printable electrode materials for high performance OLEDs and OPVs) has been successfully completed. The project partners (which include Fraunhofer COMEDD and Carnot MIB) demonstrated novel organic transparent electrodes, which are arranged on a backing film and enable flexible electronic components.

The performance of these electrodes was demonstrated using flexible OLEDs and OPVs. COMEDD explains that new electrodes could replace conventional transparent metal oxides, such as ITO - which is less cost effective and less flexible. COMEDD can now manufacture flexible organic devices using the new electrodes, and the project partners are looking for industry partners to commercialize this technology.

Fluxim released a new version (3.4) of its setfos simulation software used to study OLEDs and OPVs. The new version 3.4 is a major improvement with respect to drift-diffusion modeling and light-outcoupling simulation. Some of the major improvements are:

• Modeling of electrical impedance spectra in the presence of charge traps
• Improved convergence for the steady-state drift-diffusion solver
• Improved heterojunction interface model
• Light extraction from arbitrary stacks of coherent and incoherent layers

The Holst Centre published a nice video showing some new flexible OLED demonstrators:

First up are a flexible OLED with an wireless sensor integrated into a fabric and a watch with a flexible OLED. There's also a cool demo that shows how you can iron a flexible OLED on a fabric - the OLED can withstand the high temperature without a problem. They also show how an OLED lighting can be used under water.