Related Projects

Pyroelectrical and piezoelectrical printable large area sensor technology [3PLAST]

In order to establish cost-efficient innovative solutions for safety and security systems, self-controlled machine monitoring and user-friendly human-machine interfaces, it is necessary that items are able to communicate bidirectional which is realized by advanced sensor functions. Therefore, devices using novel sensor concepts manufactured via high-throughput processes on cost-efficient, flexible substrates are essential in order to be applied in high-volume markets.
More information at : www.3plast-sensor.eu/

AMAzOLED

Active Matrix of Any Shape with Organic Light Emitting Diodes Displays

The target of this project is to develop a highly reliable high brightness conformable low cost up-scalable display for demanding applications such as their use in cars, aircraft or extreme sports applications. For the time being, in these applications, the LCD is the main display technology. Although its performances are appropriate in such difficult environments, designers are looking for a solution easier to integrate. For example, the LCD backlight makes it very bulky in aircraft, both because it has to supply a lot of light and therefore needs a cooling system but also because of an heavy bezel to handle a high level of vibrations. The backlight is even more critical in systems where the display is bent or is non-rectangular like in innovative design for car but also where the weight is a major issue such as in sports items.

The solution to these issues is an emissive display technology for which both lighting and information content are integrated at the pixel level. Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) made tremendous progress in the last 2 years. AMAzOLED is planning to push the technology to its limits to achieve the expected display function for car, aircraft and extreme sports goods. The display will use colour filters on white OLED to achieve the brightness and the reliability for the light emission. The OLED does not have to be referenced to the pixel element. Each pixel element will be driven by a polymorphous TFT with a higher reliability compared to a-Si TFT without degradation on other parameters. Both new OLED and new TFT technologies are compatible with existing industrial means thus limiting the capital expenditure to manufacture the product at a lower cost.

The concept is designed to enable 2mm thick big size high-resolution TV products in a near future. The display will be built on peelable polyimide on glass as developed in FLEXIDIS. Using conformal displays offers a higher capability of integration in the envisaged applications. More information at: http://cordis.europa.eu/

CombOLED

Combined Organic LED Technology for Large Area Transparent and low cost lighting Applications

CombOLED is a European funded research and development project within the 7th Framework Programme. The goal of CombOLED 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 OLED technology into the lighting market. This will help European lighting companies to maintain their leadership in this market at worldwide level.

The CombOLED consortium resembles an OLED supply chain from substrate supply via device manufacturing until application design and prototype realization. The 7 partners are located in 4 countries all over Europe (France, Spain, Italy and Germany) and have been selected based on their high reputation in their own field. This conjoint effort coming from all the partners will guarantee the CombOLED project success and will breed a highly renowned OLED Consortium within Europe coordinated by Osram Opto Semiconductors. More information: http://www.comboled-project.eu/index

FACESS

Flexible Autonomous Cost Efficient Energy Source and Storage

The general objectives of this project are the following: to manufacture efficient organic solar cells (OSC) and a thin film battery (TFB) on flexible substrate using commercially available materials and cost efficient roll-to-roll (R2R) mass production techniques, printing, as well as integrate a control transistor circuitry on a foil.

The ultimate goal is to integrate these three structures to a single assembly resulting in a flexible, fully autonomous energy source. In this assembly organic solar cells harvest the solar energy and charge the thin film batteries which provide the electricity for an external load. The Si-based transistor circuitry integrated on the foil controls the charge operation.

Additional information
Jukka Hast
Senior Research Scientist, Project Manager
+358 20 722 2042
jukka.hast@vtt.fi

More information: http://www.vtt.fi/proj/facess/

FAST2LIGHT

High-throughput, large area and cost-effective OLED production technologies

Organic electroluminescence (OLED) holds the promise to deliver flexible, thin, lightweight and power-efficient light sources. Research up until now has been mainly motivated by work on glass-based displays, where the aspects of increased contrast, high viewing angle and response speed are critical. However, intelligent lighting applications are becoming increasingly relevant; here, the unique properties of OLED for high power-efficiency, uniform large-area light emission, and flexibility can give rise to a range of products that can transform the world we live in.

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.

The scope of the project comprises all of the layers that are part of an OLED lighting foil. It will start with the substrate choice, and introduce high-throughput deposition and patterning methods for all of the materials necessary to fabricate the final lighting foil. In doing so, it will become clear what device architectures and designs are best suited to integrate these new deposition and patterning methods. The interplay between the choice of device architecture and processing methods will be unravelled and a set of design rules for a manufacturable product will be determined, together with a final process flow. Results will be measurable in the form of demonstrators that prove the performance of the technologies and the design rules.

Fast2Light aims to strengthen the leading position of the European Lighting Industry by enabling new technologies and market possibilities. Furthermore, these new sustainable disruptive technologies will create long-term European manufacturing jobs due to their high degree of technical novelty and specialization. Finally, the intellectual property generated in new process and product domains will protect these advances from Asian and US competition.

More information: http://www.fast2light.org/

FLAME

Flexible Organic Active Matrix OLED displays for Nomadic Applications

The aim of this project is to research the materials, processing technology (including encapsulation) and substrate handling procedures to make organic light-emitting colour displays (OLED) on very thin plastic foils and driven by organic thin-film driving transistors. This proposal builds further on FLEXIDIS, where (mechanically flexible) active matrix backplanes were researched. The new project considers to advance the state of the art for a particular class of displays, namely high-information OLED displays for nomadic applications that can be rolled up repeatedly to a radius of 1 cm. The organic TFT backplane and OLED layers are processed directly on plastic substrates.

The rationale for this choice is:
- A rollable, full-colour, video-speed OLED display is the ultimate visual experience provider for next-generation portable, lightweight applications;
- Rollability requires the substrate to be plastic with thickness of 100 micron or less;
- Direct fabrication onto plastic substrates is undoubtedly most cost-effective in the longer term;
- OLEDs on plastic substrates have been shown, but further research is needed to encapsulate OLEDs (and the underlying OTFTs) in a flexible, rollable application;
- Organic transistors are highly compatible with plastic substrates, because of their low processing temperatures and similarity in thermal expansion coefficients. Furthermore, Europe is frontrunner in this new technology. This in contrast with amorphous and polycrystalline silicon, which are dominated by the Far East;
- Preliminary results indicate that the bias stress instability of organic transistors may be less severe than for amorphous silicon, making them particularly attractive for OLED displays that are current-driven.

The consortium consists of the minimum set of needed partners for this ambitious research plan: three research institutes with world state of the art OTFT and OLED technologies and an SME end user for manufacturing rollable displays.

More information: http://www.imec.be/flame

HYPOLED

High-performance OLED Microdisplays for Mobile Multimedia HMD and Micro-projection Applications

More information:

OLAtronics

Development and integration of processes and technologies for the production of Organic Low Cost and Large Area flexible Electronics

Flexible electronics seemed to be a good solution to silicon problem giving, theoretical at least, devices that can be more functional and much cheaper.But there is a real big problem that has to be solved. Flexible electronics brought forward the problem of encapsulation. Oxygen and vapor permeability results to degradation of the devices giving them small lifetime and making them unproductive.

The S&T objectives of the OLAtronics Project are the:

Development and optimization of production processes for active and passive materials by establishing an effective combination of vacuum, wet and printing methods to provide materials with advanced properties, performance, stability & lifetime, low-cost and large-area processing.

Effective encapsulation of the developed active and passive materials into components, and their large-scale fabrication onto flexible r2r substrates combined to real-time monitoring and control of materials process and quality by in-line optical techniques.

Integration of the developed manufacturing technologies into a pilot-scale to allow the low-cost and large-area manufacturing of prototype device demonstrators, ultimately in large scale.

OLAtronics will significantly enhance the existing capabilities on the synthesis, preparation, encapsulation and quality control techniques for the development of nanostructured active and passive materials with advanced physical properties. The effectiveness and robustness of the manufacturing processes, and the efficient material encapsulation will be combined with the accurate measurement of the materials optical response, microstructure and morphology by in-situ and real-time optical sensing techniques equipped with advanced analysis & modeling capabilities for the achievement of high performance materials components. These will be used initially for specific FED applications (such as EC displays and OPVs) but ultimately they will be extended to several applications, for example flexible OLED for display and lighting, e-paper, sensors, organic circuits, smart systems on tags, signage, low-cost RFID, etc.

More information: http://www.olatronics.org/

PriMeBits

Printable memory solutions for sensor, ID and media applications

In the PriMeBits project, a printable electric low-voltage non-volatile memory is developed for printed sensor, media and wireless ID applications. The main strategy is to utilize printed technology where it has a competitive advantage compared to silicon technology. The project builds on basic research of new materials and components and takes the results into prototyping of new applications. To reduce the research risk, two different technologies for the memory functionality are considered with partially overlapping application areas.

Current printable polymer-based memory technologies typically suffer from i) the needed operating voltage being high, ii) too short lifetime in room atmosphere, iii) poor temperature stability, iv) chemically reactive materials needing encapsulation and/or v) time-consuming temperature-annealing steps in fabrication. Consequently, for many commercially attractive passive and battery-powered applications, the properties of current printable memories are unsuited. To overcome the shortcomings of prior-art approaches, printable inorganic metal-oxide-nanoparticle-based ferroelectric FRAM memory and a resistive metallic-based write-once-read-many (WORM) memory will be developed. To print the ferroelectric memory, new printing inks based on, for example, barium titanate (BaTiO3) nanoparticles will be developed. For the WORM memory, the project will aim at utilizing commercial metal-nanoparticle inks with possibly some customization. Depending on the application, a printed circuitry or an external device is used for the reading and writing of the memory.

More information:

STELLA

Stretchable Electronics for Large Area Applications

Consumers are increasingly taking responsibility for their health and physical condition: they want to manage their own health and feel good, by monitoring a variety of functions of the human body (ECG, heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen saturation, temperature, etc) and activity related data (speed and acceleration obtained from body sensors) while doing sports, or throughout the day, or during recovery from illness.

Physically such monitors consist of three technology elements:

Unobtrusive sensors -small, wireless, virtually invisible, low weight- that measure relevant (body) parameters.
Algorithms that interpret these measurements.
Connectivity, preferably wireless to transfer the data to a body network for further processing.

Direct skin contact allows for full measurement capabilities, but wearing comfort requires that the monitor will not only be flexible, but also of stretchable and soft-touch nature. In the STELLA project the development of such stretchable and soft-touch substrates, including assembly with electronic devices on these substrates is proposed.

Processes will be developed to produce a stretchable conductive pattern that can be composed of printed wiring, discrete wiring, or a combination thereof formed in a predetermined arrangement on a stretchable common base substrate. The soft-touch will be achieved by using base materials with a different chemistry than what is used today for flex substrates.

Assembly methods for component mounting and interconnection, based on existing platform techniques, will have to be adapted.

Innovations from the STELLA project include:

New stretchable substrates with stretchable conductor patterns
Assembly technology on stretchable substrates, based on lead-free reflow soldering
Integration methods for electronics in stretchable products

The new technology will be proven through a number of demonstrators for the end-users in the project. The STELLA project's duration is from 01.February 2006 till 31. January 2010. Eleven partners from industry and research located in 4 European countries cover the knowledge required for development and exploitation

More information: http://www.stella-project.org

Systex

Systex, an ICT project of the Seventh Framework Programme, is a structured coordination initiative to build up a market oriented framework and orientation in the rea of e-textiles and wearable micro systems. The consortium consists of 12 partners from 5 European countries.

Grant agreement no: 224386
THEME ICT 2-3-6 Micro/ nano systems
SYSTEX is geared to foster cooperation between the different knowledge carriers: industry, academic, government institutions, research & development and users of the technology. The existing information and data based on research efforts will be pooled and evaluated to generate new interaction between the different players and a stronger market impact. The objective of SYSTEX is to identify the hurdles in the interdisciplinary knowledge transfer and to initiate actions to overcome them.
SYSTEX aims at collecting technological and non technological information on relevant projects at various levels and to classify them in a transparent knowledge based information platform, structuring the relevant data of the entire e-textiles value chain according to the requirements of the interacting partners. The analysis of the available and ongoing research
activities in e-textiles and wearable microsystems and the respective results will be edited in the framework of an interactive website and thus enhance cross-sectoral synergies and exchange of project results. Dissemination and continuous interexchange between the experts in the various fields from different European countries will facilitate this process.
SYSTEX is conceived to generate a relevant membership of all involved players in the value chain until 2010 and establish an efficient networking platform for the community of smart textiles, as far as e-textiles based on nano and micro systems are concerned. The competitive advantages for future members are to share information and knowledge in
privileged expert clusters, easy access to information on EU activities, to benefit from broad dissemination on EU level, rapid access to existing technologies and partners, exchange of ideas and data on a highly professional and reliable level.
www.systex.org

Click here to download the first Systex newsletter: uploads/Newsletter_230209final.pdf

FP6

ADRIA

Advanced Display Research Intergration Action

Europe is a global driver in advanced displays research and innovation and is one of the largest markets for information technology products with advanced displays. However research, industrial capabilities, co-operation structures between acdemia and industry and networking activities in the European display community are mostly scattered at present. Europe lacks a strong voice representing its strengths globally.

ADRIA'S vision is to appeal to the entire display community in Europe to create a common knowledge base, a common vision for an advanced displays future in Europe and appreciated services.

More information at : http://www.adria-network.org

CONTACT

Contact printing of electronics and opto-electronics

More information: http://contactprinting-electronics.org

 
FLEXCELLENCE

Roll-to-roll technology for the production of high-efficiency low cost thin film silicon photovoltaic modules

More information: http://www2.unine.ch

FLEXIDIS

Flexible Displays

More information: http://www.flexidis-project.org

FLEXONICS

Ultra-high barrier films for encapsulation of flexible electronics

More information: http://www.flexonics.org

IMPROVE