Innovation Festival: Additive, Printed, Sustainable Electronics, MicroLEDs and AR/VR Displays, Perovskites. (Free-To-Attend)

This presentation provides an overview of Panasonic Production Engineering's inkjet printing technologies and their application in display manufacturing, perovskite solar cells, and semiconductor processes.
Topics covered include:
• Display Applications: High-resolution inkjet printing for OLED and Quantum Dot (QD) displays, including sub-picoliter droplet generation and coordinated control technologies to support accurate material deposition for advanced display manufacturing.
• Perovskite Solar Cells: Inkjet coating technologies for perovskite layers, including Panasonic's Drive Per Nozzle (DPN) technology for droplet volume control and approaches to achieving uniform coatings on textured and non-uniform substrates.
• Semiconductor Applications: Recent developments in high-viscosity inkjet printing, including printhead technologies capable of handling functional materials with viscosities up to 100 mPa·s and their potential use in semiconductor-related patterning processes.
The presentation will discuss how advances in printhead design, process control, and coating technology can support industrial applications across emerging electronic and optoelectronic devices.

Understanding carrier dynamics is crucial for developing advanced semiconductor materials and optoelectronic devices across fields ranging from photovoltaics and light-emitting diodes to sensors and emerging quantum materials. While steady-state photoluminescence (PL) provides valuable information on optical quality, it often falls short in revealing the full picture of how charge carriers recombine, migrate, and interact with local defects.
Time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) and lifetime imaging techniques offer deeper insights by resolving carrier lifetimes, recombination pathways, and diffusion behavior with high temporal and spatial resolution. Combining TRPL with intensity-dependent measurements helps disentangle radiative and non-radiative processes and quantify how excitation conditions influence carrier transport, key parameters for optimizing material design and device performance.
In this contribution, we demonstrate how PicoQuant’s Solira TRPL microscope system enables detailed characterization of carrier diffusion and recombination dynamics in a wide range of semiconductor materials. Using hybrid perovskites as a showcase, given their broad relevance from photovoltaics to photodetectors, we illustrate how time- and space-resolved PL mapping can connect structural heterogeneity to electronic behavior. The same approach applies to diverse materials such as III-V semiconductors, 2D materials, quantum dots, and organic semiconductors.
This flexible measurement platform supports researchers aiming to optimize fabrication processes, reveal defect-related loss channels, and better understand fundamental transport mechanisms, all essential steps for advancing next-generation optoelectronic devices and functional materials.

Perovskite solar cells are widely regarded as promising next-generation photovoltaic technologies due to their high efficiency potential and low-temperature processing. However, scaling laboratory-scale devices to large-area, manufacturable modules—particularly on flexible substrates—remains a critical challenge. This presentation presents a full-process development approach for large-area rigid and flexible perovskite modules, focusing on scalable slot-die coating and drying technologies. All core coating and drying equipment were developed in-house to ensure process uniformity, reproducibility, and scalability. Using pilot lines with substrate sizes of 300 × 300 mm² and 1200 × 600 mm², reproducible efficiencies of approximately 22% were achieved at the smaller scale, while rigid and flexible modules exceeding 20% efficiency were demonstrated at the large-area scale. In addition, simplified C60-free device architectures were evaluated for manufacturability and performance. The results demonstrate a viable manufacturing-oriented pathway toward industrial-scale perovskite module production.

Metal halide perovskites are the solution processed semiconductors which over the past several years have reported breakthroughs in the efficiency of optoelectronic devices. They also provide a significant added value being used in tandem devices combined with traditional silicon. Recently, perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells have demonstrated efficiency of over 34.5%, however such outstanding efficiencies are often demonstrated only for small area devices.
One of the central bottlenecks in upscaling perovskite-based devices manufacturing is how to combine continuous, pre-metered coating with the handling precision required for rigid substrates of heterogeneous size, thickness and edge geometry.
In PEPPERONI project, FOM Technologies proposed and developed a production scale tool for roll-to-plate (R2P) slot-die coating of wafers and other rigid substrates. The operation sequence is continuous: (i) the wafers are sealed to an adhesive carrier, (ii) the wafer train on the transporting foil is moved below the slot-die head and gets coated to the target wet thickness, (iii) the coated film is quenched/dried, (iv) the adhesive is deactivated by an external stimulus and (v), at a peeling station, the wafers detach in a controlled way, without imposing lateral shear across the wet film and proceed to the downstream unit operation.
Tests using standard off-the-shelf silicon wafers showed that they can be successfully fed into the R2P system, coated and released from the transporting foil at the end. The built-in software enables adjustment of all the necessary functional parameters supporting easy machine operation.

The transition toward sustainable and multifunctional electronic systems requires innovative materials, scalable manufacturing approaches, and effective technology transfer. Solar TAP (Solar Technology Acceleration Platform) is a Helmholtz initiative that accelerates the development and commercialization of emerging photovoltaic technologies, particularly perovskite and organic solar cells, by connecting leading research institutions, industrial partners, and advanced research infrastructures.

Solar TAP bridges the gap between scientific discovery and industrial implementation through collaborative development projects, automated fabrication platforms, advanced characterization capabilities, and rapid prototyping workflows. The platform supports the development of lightweight, flexible, semitransparent, and multifunctional photovoltaic technologies for applications in buildings, transportation, agriculture, consumer products, and integrated electronic systems.

Beyond photovoltaics, Solar TAP contributes to the broader ecosystem of printed electronics, advanced functional materials, sustainable manufacturing, and energy-harvesting technologies. By fostering collaboration among researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, manufacturers, investors, and end users, the platform accelerates innovation and reduces barriers to market adoption.

At the TechBlick Innovation Festival, Solar TAP aims to engage with stakeholders across the printed electronics, displays, MicroLED, perovskite, and advanced materials communities. We invite engineers, researchers, entrepreneurs, inventors, technology developers, industrial partners, and end users to join our innovation ecosystem, explore new collaboration opportunities, and help accelerate the translation of breakthrough research into real-world impact.

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MicroLEDs are moving beyond display headlines into a broader role. We at QubeDot engineer microLED light sources for displays made in Europe, optical interconnects and customer-specific photonic systems.
This talk showcases how QubeDot combines InGaN/GaN microLED production expertise with a flexible light-source foundry model: custom emitter counts, geometries and sizes from single-digit microns to larger formats, processed both on GaN-on-sapphire and GaN-on-silicon.
For customer-centric light sources, this embodies shape-independent pixels, native tunable red InGaN, and high-brightness line displays with compact projection concepts.
For displays, we produce large-area microLED arrays directly combined with CMOS backplanes for HUD projections.
The decisive point is manufacturability. A strong LED process is not enough: emitter design, bumping, bonding, LLO/LIFT transfer and chip-to-substrate interconnection have to be developed as one system. QubeDot connects these pieces as a European microLED foundry and production partner, turning custom light-source designs into demonstrators, interfaces and solutions ready for integration.

MicroLED technology is a leading candidate for next-generation displays, particularly for augmented reality (AR) and high-resolution microdisplays. However, achieving high efficiency at micron-scale dimensions, scalable manufacturing, monolithic RGB integration, and seamless CMOS integration remains challenging. This talk presents Polar Light Technologies' novel bottom-up microLED platform based on pyramidal GaN/InGaN material system that addresses these key limitations.

Unlike conventional planar microLEDs fabricated through etching, the technology employs metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) to directly grow pyramidal structures, eliminating etch-induced damage, reducing material waste, and enabling efficient micrometer-scale emitters with improved manufacturability. The bottom-up approach provides compatibility with CMOS display backplanes, recently demonstrated through a working micro-display prototype in which the pyramidal microLED frontplane was successfully integrated with a high-performance CMOS backplane using precision flip-chip bonding, validating the manufacturability of the platform. Another key advantage is the ability to realize blue, green, and red emission within the same GaN/InGaN material system, enabling a pathway toward monolithic RGB integration. In addition, the pyramidal geometry produces intrinsically directional, sub-Lambertian light emission. The presentation highlights recent progress toward full-color emission and demonstrates how bottom-up pyramidal microLEDs can enable efficient, manufacturable, and scalable next-generation display technologies.

One of the central challenges in μLED display technology is achieving full-color emission. While blue μLEDs can be fabricated with high efficiency, equally efficient green and red μLEDs remain difficult. A promising solution is the use of quantum dots (QDs) as color converters on top of blue μLEDs, partially converting blue light into red and green to create an RGB light source. The requirements for the QDs are stringent: they must combine high photoluminescence quantum yield (>90%), narrow emission linewidth (FWHM < 30 nm), excellent photo- and thermal stability under high flux, and sufficient optical density to absorb blue light within conversion layers only a few micrometers thick, while being compatible with micrometer-scale patterning.

We will present QDs with a tailored particle design consisting of a small core and a spherical but very thick shell, so‑called giant shell quantum dots (GSQDs), that meet these requirements. The large shell volume provides enhanced stability, excellent optical properties, and very high blue absorption, while reabsorption remains negligible. We will address the gram-scale synthesis of GSQDs and their integration into different polymer matrices and QD ink formulations. Fraunhofer IAP-CAN has developed ligand exchange strategies to adapt the QDs to solvents, inks, monomers, and polymer matrices of different polarity, enabling their use as efficient, processable color converters for μLED displays.

Laser-Induced Forward Transfer (LIFT) is a promising approach for high-throughput microLED mass transfer, but transfer-induced residue remains a critical challenge for subsequent assembly processes. In this work, a chemically amplified release layer was evaluated using a 248 nm excimer laser-based LIFT process for microLED transfer applications. Transfer experiments demonstrated stable release of microLED dies across a wide range of laser fluences, with transfer thresholds dependent on both die size and release-layer thickness. Most importantly, residue-free transfer was achieved under optimized process conditions, as confirmed by laser scanning microscopy, indicating effective separation of the microLED dies without detectable release-layer residues on the transferred surface. The results suggest that the combination of chemically amplified release chemistry and controlled UV laser irradiation can enable clean microLED transfer while maintaining robust transfer performance. This approach provides a promising route toward residue-free laser transfer processes for next-generation microLED assembly.

This talk provides an overview of metrology solutions for characterizing µLEDs and microdisplays, with an emphasis on high resolution 2D camera based measurement. It addresses a key practical challenge in microdisplay production: as display diagonals shrink and pixel density increases, metrology must deliver both sufficient optical resolution and the right field of view (FoV). The presentation therefore benchmarks representative camera and lens configurations and translates them into typical, application relevant figures such as achievable µm/pixel and FoV.
To ensure high color accuracy for µLED typical, often narrowband spectra, the talk introduces a hybrid calibration chain that combines camera color calibration (RGB → XYZ) and ISO 17025 traceable absolute calibration using a reference spectrometer.
The measured tristimulus values are used to fine correct and propagate luminance and color calibration to the full 2D image. The presentation further explains why conventional tristimulus filter colorimeters can show large chromaticity errors for narrowband emitters.

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Commercializing perovskite and silicon-perovskite tandem solar cells requires overcoming significant barriers in long-term stability and large-area manufacturing uniformity. Interface engineering is the most critical factor in mitigating these challenges, as charge transport layers directly govern both power conversion efficiency (PCE) and degradation pathways. Nano-C presents its latest advancements in scalable interface material innovations designed specifically for high-throughput, industrial-scale photovoltaic manufacturing.

Perovskite photovoltaics are approaching commercialization, with recent module milestones and early market activity signaling a transition from laboratory demonstration to manufacturable product. This shift carries a consequence the field is only beginning to confront: the value proposition that guided perovskite development — performance first, durability second, with manufacturability and cost largely deferred — was well suited to the demonstration phase, but is increasingly mismatched to a commercial market defined by intense pricing pressure. This talk argues that as the technology matures, the priorities must invert toward manufacturing-friendly, lower-cost approaches, and examines what that means quantitatively. After briefly situating where perovskite PV stands today, we turn to the economics: the pricing dynamics shaping the broader PV market, current cost estimates for single-junction and tandem perovskite modules, and a sensitivity analysis of the principal levers — spanning capital expenditure, operating cost, and materials — that determine module economics at scale. The aim is to give a mixed audience of researchers and manufacturers a shared, quantitative framework for reasoning about perovskite module cost, and to clarify which levers most influence the path to cost-competitiveness

Metal oxide materials such as ZnO, SnO₂, NiO, and ITO play critical roles in modern electronic devices, including solar cells, sensors, displays, electrochromic windows, and flexible electronics. However, conventional deposition methods often require vacuum processing, high temperatures, complex equipment, and significant manufacturing costs, creating barriers to large-scale production.

This presentation will explore how printable metal oxide nano inks can address these challenges by enabling low-temperature, solution-based fabrication while simultaneously improving device performance. Advances in nanoparticle synthesis, surface engineering, and ink formulation have made it possible to produce highly stable nano inks with excellent optical, electrical, and rheological properties that are compatible with scalable manufacturing techniques such as slot-die coating, inkjet printing, screen printing, and roll-to-roll processing.

As perovskite and tandem photovoltaic technologies transition from laboratory-scale development to high-volume manufacturing, there is increasing need for non-contact characterization methods capable of identifying defects, monitoring process uniformity, and supporting statistical process control throughout production. While electroluminescence (EL) imaging remains an important diagnostic technique, it requires electrically complete devices and therefore cannot be applied during many intermediate manufacturing steps.
Photoluminescence (PL) imaging offers a complementary approach that can be implemented immediately following deposition of the active absorber layer and throughout subsequent processing. This presentation discusses the role of large-area PL imaging as an in-line metrology tool for perovskite and tandem PV manufacturing. Topics include monitoring of film uniformity and defect formation during processing, characterization of tandem structures through spectrally selective imaging, and practical considerations for deployment on production lines, including illumination design, ambient-light rejection, measurement repeatability, and integration with automated handling systems.
The presentation will also explore approaches for extracting quantitative device information from PL and biased-PL measurements, including mapsof implied open-circuit voltage, optical diode ideality factor, series resistance, and PV conversion efficiency. Finally, examples of automated defect detection and machine-learning-assisted image analysis will be discussed as methods for increasing throughput and reducing operator variability. Together, these capabilities illustrate how PL imaging can provide actionable process and device information throughout the manufacturing workflow, enabling earlier detection of process excursions and more data-driven optimization of perovskite PV production.

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Optical designs are simulated using a model of the light that enters them, and the realism of the simulation is limited by this source model. For applications such as AR/VR display design, the spectral behaviour of the source matters. Measurements of current display sources show clear colorimetric and spectral dependencies, and established LED source models, such as the blue/yellow two-emitter approach, cannot be transferred to such sources. This talk shows these dependencies directly and reviews how spectrally resolved ray files can be generated from near-field goniometer measurements.

As the industry prepares for high-volume augmented reality (AR) product launches expected between 2028 and 2030, limitations in manufacturing scalability are becoming increasingly critical. Surface Relief Grating (SRG)–based diffractive waveguides are emerging as the dominant architecture for consumer AR glasses due to their design flexibility and compatibility with wafer-level production methods. However, current single-wafer nanoimprint lithography (NIL) systems, while capable of high-precision replication of sub-wavelength structures, lack the throughput and cost efficiency required for large-scale production. As a result, manufacturing costs remain the primary barrier to widespread adoption.

This talk presents Cypris, a fully automated NIL production platform based on a panel-level, multi-wafer carrier approach. Multiple wafers are processed simultaneously on a single large-format carrier, increasing throughput and improving cost efficiency while maintaining overlay accuracy and residual layer thickness uniformity. The system integrates Roll-to-Plate (R2P) imprinting that supports NIL-only grating fabrication as well as NIL combined with subsequent etch or atomic layer deposition (ALD) steps, allowing manufacturers to select the optimal design and process route for their target grating geometry.

The pilot production results indicate that this method is compatible with the requirements of large-scale manufacturing and provides a feasible path toward industrial production of AR waveguides.

Wearable and outdoor display systems are increasingly expected to deliver richer visual experiences, higher brightness, longer operating life, and greater design flexibility, all while operating within strict power and form-factor constraints. This talk explores the emerging opportunity of integrating micro-solar technology directly into displays, transforming the display surface from a passive power consumer into an active energy-harvesting platform.
The presentation will examine how micro-scale photovoltaic elements can be integrated with display architectures to capture ambient indoor and outdoor light without compromising the user experience. For wearable applications such as smart watches, health-monitoring devices, fitness bands, and connected industrial wearables, micro-solar integration can help extend battery life, reduce charging frequency, and enable more compact product designs. For outdoor applications, including signage, smart-city interfaces, electronic shelf labels, transportation displays, and IoT-enabled information panels, display-integrated energy harvesting can improve energy autonomy and reduce the need for frequent maintenance or wired power infrastructure.

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