New German project brings together 11 partners for €32M OLED research

Image courtesy Merck

The consortium, to be lead by Merck, aims to develop soluble materials for use in large area organic light-emitting diode (OLED) components for devices, televisions, electronic traffic signs or lighting systems. The total budget amounts to around €32 million.

“OLEDs have tremendous future potential as a cost- and energy-efficient lighting technology,” said Udo Heider, Vice President responsible for the OLED unit at Merck. “We want to provide industry with customised OLED materials, thus enabling cost-effective manufacturing processes from the liquid phase.”

The NEMO project, which is being funded until the end of July 2012, involves four industrial companies and seven academic partners. The three other participating companies are H.C. Starck Clevios GmbH  of Leverkusen, Ormecon GmbH, Hamburg and DELO Industrie Klebstoffe GmbH & Co. KGaA, Munich.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research and the universities of Tübingen, Regensburg, Potsdam and the Humboldt University of Berlin are the academic partners.

The BMBF is providing funding of €16 million under its ‘Material Innovations for Industry and Society’ programme. The industrial companies will finance the remaining expenses on their own.

OLEDs are already in use in small-surface displays, for instances in cell phones and MP3 players. They emit light of different colours when electrical current is applied, consume little energy and offer sharp images from every viewing angle.

By using ultra-thin luminescent layers, OLED technology makes it possible to produce unique, large-surface homogeneous lighting surfaces with a total layer thickness of just a few millimeters. Compared to the vacuum evaporation process used today, these new materials should significantly improve scalability and coating efficiency in particular. The NEMO project will focus on soluble phosphorescent materials for red, green and blue applications.