Organic/Large Area Electronics (OLAE) is a rapidly emerging sector, that combines organic, polymer, inorganic and hybrid materials in multilayer nano-structures for large-scale manufacturing of conformable & lightweight devices for energy harvesting (OPV) and light emission (OLED for lighting). Their conformability and capability for large area manufacturing can enable their widespread implementation in existing and new consumer products from energy, lighting, displays and surfaces, electronic circuits, all (bio) sensors, wearables, ICT, IoT, etc.
In order to unleash the huge potential of OPVs and OLEDs in consumer applications and to enable Industrial Growth in Europe, it is crucial to achieve fast OLAE-enabled product delivery with an unprecedented yield and quality. Also, their manufacturing processes must demonstrate a strong productivity improvement to remain commercially competitive.
However, there are several challenges to address that include: insufficient control of the properties of materials and devices, inhomogeneities in their thickness, structure over large areas, low process yield, limited reliability and high consumption of resources, batch-to-batch and run-to-run variations in properties and performance, increased waste and high costs. These delay significantly the market acceptance of OLAE-enabled products.
Organic and Large Area Electronics (OEs) is one of the most rapidly emerging sectors of the Nano Science and Technology, that revolutionizes many industrial applications in (Lighting & Displays, Energy, Buildings, Transport, Photonics, Health, Wearables, IoT, etc) and developed in parallel with the R2R Printing and Vapour Phase Deposition Technologies for its products manufacturing. The OE market is rapidly growing worldwide, from 31.7 B$ in 2018 to 77.3 B$ in 2029 driven by OLEDs, OPVs, biosensors, flexible batteries. OEs is a huge opportunity for EU industry to become a global leader in this field.
However, the wider commercialization of OEs requires the implementation of process-adapted, fast, accurate and robust nanoscale analytical tools that could offer reliable quality control of materials/devices and cost effective fabrication.
RealNano will solve these bottlenecks by developing a novel combination of multimodal, multi-scale, non-destructive and truly fast in-line and real-time nano-characterization tools, and smart modelling methodologies to revolutionize manufacturing of OEs.
The RealNano innovations will open the way to revolutionize industrial manufacturing of OEs for numerous industrial applications, by:
- Large Area Printing Technologies (R2R, Sheet-to-Sheet) for the large area manufacturing of polymer-based OEs composed of ultra-thin nanolayer architectures in complex OE products (OPV, OLED, OTFTs, etc.) for applications in Automotive, Energy, Packaging, Electronics, Wearables, Health, etc.
- Gas Transport & Vapour Deposition Technologies (OVPD, PVD, CVD, ALD) for fabrication of advanced OE nanolayers (inorganic, organic, hybrid, nanoparticles) and devices with superior quality and reproducibility in structure, surface/interface quality and performance.
