Europe's technology leaders in the development of flexible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) for lighting and signage applications have joined together in a consortium to develop an open access pilot line that will accelerate the commercial adoption of this promising new technology. The project titled 'PI-SCALE' aims to create a European-wide pilot line which will enable companies of all sizes to quickly and cost effectively test and scale up their flexible OLED lighting concepts and turn them into market ready products.
In November 2012, the TREASORES project (Transparent Electrodes for Large Area Large Scale Production of Organic Optoelectronic Devices) started with the aim of developing technologies to dramatically reduce the production costs of organic electronic devices such as solar cells and LED lighting panels. Funded with €9M from the European Commission and an additional €6M from the project partners, the project has since then produced seven patent applications, a dozen peer-reviewed publications and provided inputs to international standards organisations.
The continuous printing of electronics for displays or solar cells depends on a rapid drying of the surface and good conductivity of the silver inks. A newly developed infrared module from Heraeus Noblelight GmbH, headquartered in Hanau, Germany, achieves this in significantly less than one second (0.32 secs) and is consequently reported to be almost 2000 times faster than conventional drying techniques.
