Plextronics partners with Holst Centre on roll-to-roll OLED processing

Plextronics, a Pittsburgh, PA-based specialist in printed electronics, has partnered with Eindhoven, the Netherlands-based Holst Centre, an open initiative by imec and TNO, to share research toward scalable OLED lighting and signage. The goal is to improve the scalability of flexible OLED laboratory devices. For low-cost processing on flexible substrates, OLED materials need to be compatible with solutions-based roll-to-roll processing. For OLED devices, this includes both hole-injection and hole-transport layers that are deposited between conductive and protective layers in the device.

Plextronics specializes in the development and manufacturing of solution-based hole-injection and hole-transport layers. It will make its Plexcore hole-injection and hole-transport inks available within the Holst Centre program and in return can benefit from the research results to further optimize the ink formulations. The Holst Centre plans to use the Plexcore inks in its shared research program on Flexible OLED Lighting and Signage to create functional OLED demonstrators, which will be characterized and evaluated as they would be in a production environment.

Other partners in the Flexible OLED Lighting and Signage program include DuPont Teijin Films, which manufactures plastic substrates, and Solvay Chemical Group, which designed the device stack in a 69 cm² OLED lighting tile laboratory demonstrator fabricated earlier this year that featured a luminous efficacy of 30 lm/W.

The group will continue to pursue both device designs and manufacturing techniques that will enable low-cost OLED production. Other project goals include:

Processing on metal and plastic foils
Innovative device designs to minimize the number of process steps for OLED foils
Low-cost alternatives to indium-tin oxide (ITO) for transparent electrodes
Top and bottom emission configurations
Optimized light outcoupling

The program is designed to brings together partners throughout the value chain -- from thin-film and polymer suppliers to lighting and design companies.