Its brightness level is usually 1,000cd/m² with power input of less than a watt. In ideal operating conditions it has a lifespan of [...]]]> OSRAM Opto Semiconductors have started selling what appears to be the first OLED lighting product.
The warm white, 80 mm diameter ORBEOS panel with an efficiency of 25 lm/W is now available for purchase.

Its brightness level is usually 1,000cd/m² with power input of less than a watt. In ideal operating conditions it has a lifespan of around 5,000 hours.

The company today announced a construction of a new roll-to-roll pilot coating line to manufacture OLED lighting within its Hino facility in Tokyo. The pilot line is dedicated to establish production technology toward mass-production and to sell the product on the limited [...]]]> Konica Minolta is planning a new roll-to-roll pilot manufacturing line for OLED lighting panels.

The company today announced a construction of a new roll-to-roll pilot coating line to manufacture OLED lighting within its Hino facility in Tokyo. The pilot line is dedicated to establish production technology toward mass-production and to sell the product on the limited basis. Spending 3.5 billion yen, the line will be completed in the autumn of 2010 and the product will be commercialized within the fiscal year 2010.

Such technologies as material, coating, multi-layer design, and optical design technologies, nurtured through the development of photographic film and optical lens, have been fully adopted in the development of the OLED lighting. For the pilot line, Konica Minolta designed and developed its own roll-to-roll coating method to manufacture flexible plastic-base OLED lighting. This method will serve as the key to accomplishing cost advantage when the OLED lighting flourishes in the future.

[Via Printed Electronics World]

[via OLED-Info]

The G24i photovoltaic panel will be integrated into a range of bags targeting the consumer market. The panel will harvest energy while used outdoors as well as in low light conditions indoors – [...]]]> G24 Innovations (G24i) and consumer electronics bag manufacturer Mascotte Industrial Associates are announcing the world’s first commercial product using Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells (DSSC):

The G24i photovoltaic panel will be integrated into a range of bags targeting the consumer market. The panel will harvest energy while used outdoors as well as in low light conditions indoors – a unique advantage of the G24i DSSC module – and repower mobile electronic devices such as mobile phones, e-books, cameras, and portable LED lighting systems. The G24i module is based on a technology invented by the internationally acclaimed chemist, Prof. Michael Grätzel, Ph. D, Director, Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne.

announce that they have jointly manufactured fully functional re-writable polymer memory products in a high-volume roll-to-roll printing process. [...] The Thinfilm re-writable memory together with a reader/writer provides a platform for Toy and Game [...]]]> PolyIC and Thin Film Electronics

announce that they have jointly manufactured fully functional re-writable polymer memory products in a high-volume roll-to-roll printing process. [...]
The Thinfilm re-writable memory together with a reader/writer provides a platform for Toy and Game designers to create the next generation of interactive and evolvable toys and games where the memory could be linked to the online world.

Press Release (pdf)

From the press release:

A joint Thinfilm and InkTec project has been successfully completed to demonstrate fully R2R printed memories with a layout and device structure developed by Thinfilm, targeting applications such as game cards [...]]]> InkTec Co., Ltd. (Korea) and Thin Film Electronics ASA (Norway/Sweden) announced fully-functional non-volatile memory devices fabricated using a high-volume roll-to-roll printing process.

From the press release:

A joint Thinfilm and InkTec project has been successfully completed to demonstrate fully R2R printed memories with a layout and device structure developed by Thinfilm, targeting applications such as game cards and toys. The work has been conducted under the Joint Development Agreement between Thinfilm and InkTec entered in June 2008.

The project has been a huge success with the realization of a R2R production worthy printing process capable of realizing printed memory cells with a yield in the 96-97 % range for the best device structure. Until now, several rolls, each with more than 100 meters of printed memory has been produced with a total of 5 printing steps.

A significant part of the work has been to develop inks suitable for the realization of the desired target. The ink compositions for the electrodes are based on InkTec’s proprietary non-particle based silver complex compound whereas the memory ink is based on a proprietary ferroelectric polymer jointly developed by Thinfilm and Solvay Solexis SA.

Via fabtech.org.

The University licensed the patent rights to the technology to Solarmer last September. The license covers several polymers under development in Yu’s [...]]]> Solarmer Energy Inc., founded in 2006 to commercialise polymer solar cell technology developed by the Yang Yang group at UCLA, are using a new semiconducting material (”PTB1″) invented by University of Chicago chemists.

The University licensed the patent rights to the technology to Solarmer last September. The license covers several polymers under development in Yu’s laboratory [...].
An advantage of the Chicago technology is its simplicity. Several laboratories around the country have invented other polymers that have achieved efficiencies similar to those of Yu’s polymers, but these require far more extensive engineering work to become a viable commercial product.
“We think that our system has potential,” Yu said. “The best system so far reported is 6.5 percent, but that’s not a single device. That’s two devices.”
By combining Solarmer’s device engineering expertise with Yu and Liang’s semiconducting material, they have been able to push the material’s efficiency even higher.

Via Science Daily

Inspired by the human eye, Ma’s curved photodetector could eliminate that distortion. In the eye, light enters [...]]]> University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have developed flexible photodetectors consisting of 250 nm thick single-crystal germanium membranes transferred onto 175 µm thick PET substrates using a dry printing technique. This could allow distortion-free photos without the need for fancy lenses.

Inspired by the human eye, Ma’s curved photodetector could eliminate that distortion. In the eye, light enters though a single lens, but at the back of the eye, the image falls upon the curved retina, eliminating distortion. “If you can make a curved imaging plane, you just need one lens,” says Ma. “That’s why this development is extremely important.”

Ma and his group can create curved photodetectors with specially fabricated nanomembranes — extremely thin, flexible sheets of germanium, a very light-sensitive material often used in high-end imaging sensors. Researchers then can apply the nanomembranes to any polymer substrate, such as a thin, flexible piece of plastic. Currently, the group has demonstrated photodetectors curved in one direction, but Ma hopes next to develop hemispherical sensors.

The work has been published in Applied Physics Letters: Flexible photodetectors on plastic substrates by use of printing transferred single-crystal germanium membranes.

[via The Register]

The first practical demonstration of [...]]]> HP and the Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University (ASU) have demonstrated a protoype flexible display fabricated using HP’s self-aligned imprint lithography (SAIL). SAIL (3D resist mask on a multi-layer stack and several consecutive etching steps) enables the patterning of multiple layers without alignment issues in a roll-to-roll process.

The first practical demonstration of the flexible displays was achieved through collaborative efforts between the FDC and HP as well as other FDC partners including DuPont Teijin Films and E Ink. To create this display, the FDC produces stacks of semiconductor materials and metals on flexible Teonex® Polyethylene Naphthalate (PEN) substrates from DuPont Teijin Films.

HP then patterns the substrates using the SAIL process and subsequently integrates E Ink’s Vizplex™ imaging film to produce an actively addressed flexible display on plastic.

[CEO Richard] Kirk is in “advanced talks” towards a £3m funding round which will pay for the [...]]]> UK start-up PolyPhotonix are to set up a production line for large-area OLED lighting at the Printable Electronics Technology Centre (PETEC, part of NETPark in County Durham, UK).
They will be using PLED (polymer OLED) materials under license from CDT.

[CEO Richard] Kirk is in “advanced talks” towards a £3m funding round which will pay for the production line and 30 months of operations.
The firm already has some funding through the Government’s Technology Strategy Board through a project called Manufacturing Emissive Nanotechnology Devices in Polymers (MENDIPs). [...]
PolyPhotonix’ intended main markets are automotive and architectural lighting, but Kirk also expects some interest from makers of general lighting products.
The production line will initially make its OLED emitters on 200×200mm glass substrates. “We are taking the best materials as they are today,” said Kirk.
Flexible plastic substrates are also on the cards once glass-based emitters are in production.

___________________________
Update 2009-02-18: According to IDTechEx’s Printed Electronics World, PolyPhotonix have now raised GBP 4.5 million.

The dye-based organic [...]]]> A team of researchers at MIT, headed by Marc Baldo, have developed solar concentrators based on coatings of organic dyes on glass or plastic substrates. Sunlight absorbed by the dye molecules is re-emitted at different wavelengths and waveguided to the photovoltaic cells at the edge of the glass substrate. From the press release:

The dye-based organic solar concentrator functions without the use of tracking or cooling systems, greatly reducing the overall cost compared to other concentrator technologies. [...] Some light passes through the concentrator and can be absorbed by lower voltage solar cells underneath. Alternatively, the partially transmissive concentrator can function as a window.

In the published work (Science) the dye layers were deposited from the vapor phase, but solution processing is in principle also possible.
Apparently very similar luminescent solar concentrators were first developed in the 1970’s, but suffered from absorption of the light before it reached the edges, as well as poor stability of the dyes.
While the stability of the current devices is also not good enough yet for products, the inventors believe the technology could be commercialized within three years.
Covalent Solar, a company being spun out of MIT by three of its inventors (Michael Currie, Jon Mapel, and Shalom Goffri) is working on achieving this goal.

At ECN, organic photovoltaics are being researched for almost a decade. The knowledge of materials, system designs and production processes has come to a point where transition to large scale [...]]]> The ECN (Energy research Centre of the Netherlands) is teaming up with the Holst Centre to transfer their lab-scale solar cell processing to Roll-to-Roll production:

At ECN, organic photovoltaics are being researched for almost a decade. The knowledge of materials, system designs and production processes has come to a point where transition to large scale manufacturing has to be envisaged.
At Holst Centre, the recently opened Roll-to-Roll research line for printed electronics will be used to complement the knowledge of ECN and support the further research towards low-cost, large-area manufacturing. To guarantee the low-cost potential, the upscaling will initially be done with active materials that are abundantly available, although an eye will be kept on new high-performance materials. In a first phase the investigated processes will be slot-die coating and gravure printing. Within the ECN labs, efficiencies of over 4% have been obtained. Aim is to at least sustain this level of efficiency when going towards roll-to-roll production.
Being research centres, ECN and Holst Centre will not take any of the technology in production themselves. The open-innovation program aims at industrial parties to subscribe and assign resident researchers to join the research teams on site.

First products include displays for smart-cards, reconfigurable keypads for mobile devices, and optical-shutter windows.

In the future Citala also [...]]]> Citala are making flexible, reflective displays using roll-to-roll manufacturing. The Active Pixel Display (APD™) technology is based on their proprietary Onyx™ layer sandwiched between two ITO coated PET foils. A matel layer is added for reflective displays.

First products include displays for smart-cards, reconfigurable keypads for mobile devices, and optical-shutter windows.

In the future Citala also plans to manufacture high-resolution, active matrix displays:

Citala’s development strategy is to integrate Onyx™, the core of APD™ technology, and roll-to-roll manufacturing with an innovative partner capable of producing a flexible active-matrix backplane. The company expects to achieve a fully functional integration in the near future.