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.
SmartLine will address the above challenges by an EU-level transnational cooperation between world-class excellence entities with established track-record in metrology tools and manufacturing (from TRL5 to TRL7).
It will provide practical industry solutions to achieve a strong productivity improvement for OLAE devices production. It will develop sophisticated non-destructive and robust in-line metrology and control solutions for R2R printing and OVPD processes for traceable measurement of properties and quality of highly integrated nano-layers and devices during their fabrication. This will enable real-time control on the process stability, properties homogeneity, material/device quality and performance reliability.
SmartLine will revolutionize the European Industries of Organic Electronics, Functional Thin Films (e.g. optical, antimicrobial coatings, barriers, hydro-phobic/philic), Electronics, Wearables, Energy, Automotive, Transport, Aerospace, Health, etc., with robust & in-line metrology and control solutions.
SmartLine will also contribute to existing standards and will strongly improve existing manufacturing processes by providing solutions for metrology controlled manufacturing processes, accelerating the industry uptake of in-line metrology tools and control systems, demonstrating better resource efficiency, yield and productivity of novel components and final products for commercial applications.
