The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) is a UK based R&D institute that helps companies develop and scale manufacturing processes. The CPI sent us the following video and update on its OLED/OPV prototype line (built by MBraun) that was designed to enable materials companies, device designers and end users to develop their technology within a fully automated, controlled environment.

CPI's system supports both small evaporized and soluble OLED materials. The line uses slot die technology to allow the coating of substrates in a highly repeatable and reproducible manner with a uniform film thickness of under 50 nm.

MBraun and nTact have announced a new partnership that will allow both companies to offer a complete system solution: a glove-box (from MBraun) with a slot die coater from nTact. The companies will offer both standardized and custom combined system with nTact's nRad or nRad2 coaters, with MBraun's line of glove-boxes and custom enclosures. These can be used for both R&D and full-scale production.

In their press release, MBraun says that they hope to "serve the evolving coating needs of many industries" - particularly the OLED display and lighting and OPVs.

Nanomarkets released a new white paper in which they discuss whether there's a real market for novel encapsulation technologies (focusing on OLED and PV applications). While the total encapsulation market for these two applications is large (around $500 million in 2013, growing to $2 billion by 2019), most of it will be rigid glass.

In fact in 2015 only 21.3% of the market will use novel encapsulation, and this only grow to 26.9% by 2019. In terms of revenue, the novel encapsulation market for OLED sand PVs will grow from about $50 million in 2013 to just over $500 million in 2019, and most of it will be for PV applications, OLEDs will only reach about $100 by 2019.

Professor Vivian Yam from Hong Kong University explains the University's research into efficient phosphorescent OLED materials. Professor Yam is investigating intermolecular interactions and the range of colors those materials can produce. They are also researching OPV panels.

The EU launched a new €11.2-million 3-year project called Flex-o-Fab that aims to help commercialize flexible OLEDs within six years. The project partners will create a a pilot-scale modular yet integrated manufacturing chain for flexible OLEDs, and use it to develop reliable fabrication / production processes.

The Flex-o-Fab project will draw on technologies and expertise already used to produce glass-based OLEDs and flexible displays. It will look to migrate existing sheet-to-sheet processes to roll-to-roll (R2R) production to further reduce costs and enable high-volume production. The encapsulation, one of the key challenges of flexible panel production, will be the multilayer barrier technology developed by Holst Centre. The project will also develop novel anode technologies that will need to be transparent with low resistivity, reliable, robust and scalable for R2R production on foil substrates.

Fluxim launched a new all-in-one measurement system called paios for the characterization of organic devices (OLEDs and OPVs). Paios is used for extracting material and device parameters such as the charge carrier mobility by performing a range of dynamic electrical measurement techniques including CELIV, impedance spectroscopy and transient space-charge-limited currents.

Paios complements the company's setfos device simulation software. Fluxim says that by using paios and comparing measurement and simulation results, crucial parameters may be extracted and physical models can be validated - and this leads to more predictive simulation results.

The Holst Centre and Rolic Technology have entered into a research partnership on protective moisture barriers for flexible electronics applications such as OLED and OPV. Rolic will develop new materials that will enable commercialization of of high-end flexible barriers and solutions for improved light out-coupling.

The Holst Centre aims to develop this thin film barrier fabrication technology for sheet-to-sheet (S2S) application as well as roll-to-roll (R2R). The focus of this projects seems to be OLED lighting, but this will also apply to OLED displays and OPV panels. In the photo above (sent by the Holst Centre) you can see an OLED panel with black spot defects (left), and the same panel, protected by a thin film barrier, without defects. The panels themselves are Philips Lumiblade OLED lighting panels, made on rigid glass.

Kyoto University professor Hiroyuki Yano developed a new technology that produces transparent paper (cellulose nanofibers). This new material may be used as a substrate for transparent OLED panels, OPVs and other applications.

Cellulose nanofibers are very strong (eight times stronger than steel, in fact) but also very light. By adding resin to the nanofibers, they become transparent. Yano's transparent sheets are only 100 micrometer thick and feature a light transmittance of 87.8%.

Bruker announced a new photoconductive atomic-force Microscopy (pcAFM) module for the Dimension Icon platform. The new modules enables sample illumination while performing nanoscale electrical characterization. Bruker says that the new module (combined with their PeakForce TUNA technology) enables the highest resolution photoconductivity and nanomechanical mapping for OLED (or OPV) device samples.

The new modules provides uniform backside illumination and can be fiber coupled to industry-standard solar simulators for OPV testing. It is compatible with Bruker’s turnkey 1ppm glove box configuration.

Remember Daimler's Smart Forvision concept EV? That car has a transparent solar-panels on the roof, see-through dashboard and transparent OLEDs for internal lighting - on the roof of the car. We knew that Daimler was collaborating with BASF on this concept, and today BASF released a press release saying that indeed they developed those panels together with Philips.

The OLEDs are transparent when switched off, allowing for a clear view outside the vehicle, yet providing light only within the vehicle when switched on. The transparent OLED sandwich structure can be combined with equally transparent solar cells, as was demonstrated in the Smart Forvision. This development was achieved as part of a longstanding cooperation (since 2006) between BASF and Philips in the research and development of OLED modules.