SBIR-STTR Award

Low cost printed electrodes for OLED lighting
Award last edited on: 10/25/2024

Sponsored Program
SBIR
Awarding Agency
DOE
Total Award Amount
$221,717
Award Phase
1
Solicitation Topic Code
04a
Principal Investigator
Hongmei Zhang

Company Information

Plextronics Inc

2180 William Pitt Way
Pittsburgh, PA 15238
   (412) 423-2030
   N/A
   www.plextronics.com
Location: Single
Congr. District: 17
County: Allegheny

Phase I

Contract Number: DE-FG02-13ER90669
Start Date: 6/10/2013    Completed: 12/31/2013
Phase I year
2013
Phase I Amount
$221,717
Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) is a new emerging technology that is energy efficient and environment friendly lighting replacement for current lighting technologies such as incandescent bulbs and fluorescent tubes. As performance of OLEDs has improved over the last several years it has demonstrated the potential to reach parity with LED lighting. However cost remains a major obstacle for main stream adoption and commercialization. According to DOE SSL road map, 40% of material cost is the cost of integrated substrates which include glass, ITO with metal grids and light-out-coupling (LOC) layers. As panel size increases, conductivity of ITO will not be sufficient to ensure brightness uniformity and power efficiency. Current best commercially available ITO substrates have sheet resistance & gt; ~5 ohms/sq. This is insufficient for large area panel with pixel size & gt; ~ 3x3 cm. Metal grids are needed in order to reduce sheet resistance of anode and hence reduce power consumption and improve luminance uniformity of OLED. In this proposal we demonstrate large area OLED panels on low cost anode structure by using inkjet printed grids using a novel high conductivity reactive silver ink and integrate the grids with Plextronics hole-injection layer (HIL). In order to reduce both material cost as well as increase thru-put by minimizing number of photolithography steps, inkjet printing will be used to fabricate anode structure. Printing offers direct patterning as well as high material utilization and thus potential for significant cost reduction. By process development and process integration of grids and HIL we demonstrate low cost printed anode structure that enables large area OLED panel manufacturing. Our proposal supports the development of affordable, large OLED lighting required for commercial applications such as custom lighting used in retail displays.

Phase II

Contract Number: ----------
Start Date: 00/00/00    Completed: 00/00/00
Phase II year
----
Phase II Amount
----