AIXTRON to participate in R&D project for introduction of OLEDs into the lighting market

The final goal of this project, called OPAL 2008 (Organic Phosphorescent lights for Applications in the Lighting market 2008), is the development of an OLED production technology capable of achieving the cost target of a few Euro cent per cm2 for a high performance white OLED device. To reach this target, the individual research activities of all partners within this group will be gathered and coordinated to maximise the feasible synergy effects.

The specialized organic materials required will be developed by BASF. The device architecture for the lighting modules and the adapted OLED processing technology will be developed by OSRAM and Philips.

AIXTRON’s contribution to the project will be to improve the production capabilities of the OVPD process by designing equipment for large area deposition of OLED devices. With its unique features, low cost manufacturing, large area deposition and high flexibility in making novel multilayer devices, the proprietary OVPD technology is considered as the most suitable one for mass production. These features are seen as the key properties in future production to achieve the efficiency of 50 lm/W at 1000 cd/m2 as required for lighting products. The research will be carried out in Aachen, Germany at the Philips production site in Aachen Rothe Erde where a prototype OVPD system is already installed and running. Additional scientific support is provided by RWTH Aachen University. This collaboration ensures that the correlation between device performance, chemistry and production technology will be fully understood.

The German Ministry of Science and Technology (BMBF) supports the development of organic light emitting diodes (OLED) for lighting applications with 100 Mio Euro for the next 5 years (OLED2015). The involved companies in Germany, 33 partners within the OLED initiative, will contribute additional 500 Mio Euro to achieve the technical targets. Scope of the initiative is the introduction of this new lighting technology into the market.

OVPD technology has been exclusively licensed to AIXTRON from Universal Display Corporation (UDC), Ewing, N.J. USA for equipment manufacture. OVPD technology is based on an invention by Professor Stephen R. Forrest et. al. at Princeton University, USA, which was exclusively licensed to UDC. AIXTRON and UDC have jointly developed and qualified OVPD pre-production equipment.