Low-Cost Roll Process For Flexible & Rigid Glass OLED Lighting Substrates

The ability to combine multiple polymeric, metallic, and dielectric structures having nano- and microscale features on flexible substrates opens the door to the production of otherwise prohibitively expensive functional films. Scalable and cost-effective R2R processing can create these materials at dramatically reduced costs and with increased throughput. Substrates with multiple functionalities are an enabling technology for applications in flexible electronics and other fields, such as high-efficiency OLED lighting (trapped light extraction), waste-heat-to-electricity conversion (IR rectennas), spectral signature control (LWIR plasmonic metamaterials), light guiding for edge-lit films, to name a few. An important example of this kind of multi-dimensional, multi-material process that will be discussed in this talk is our development of working substrates for OLED solid-state lighting panels with improved output efficiency using a combination of periodic nanoarrays for extracting trapped light and high transparency (>98%) conformal metal mesh electrode layers for large-area current spreading. Our company, MicroContinuum, Inc. (Watertown MA), develops custom solutions, from proof-of-concept to production scale-up, for clients’ demanding applications.