ENGINEERINGNET.EU -- The EU-funded Clean4Yield project, officially launched on May 1, aims to develop new technologies for inspecting, cleaning and repairing moving foils, and detecting and preventing defects in large-scale roll-to-roll production of OLEDs and OPVs.
High-volume roll-to-roll processes are key to making organic electronics such as OLEDs (organic light-emitting diodes) and OPVs (organic photovoltaics) available at mass-market prices. Manufacturers will be looking for production yields above 95% to minimize the wastage of expensive production materials.
However, organic electronic devices are made of layers of chemicals, each around 100-300 nanometers thick. At this scale, a single dust particle can make a connection between layers, causing the final device to malfunction.
Inspection, defect detection, cleaning and repair of moving foils
Meeting these yield requirements will require advanced contamination and defect control. Such issues are well-known in traditional silicon-based electronics. However the larger areas, and moving, flexible substrates of roll-to-roll processes mean existing techniques cannot be easily transferred.
Hence the Clean4Yield project will work to develop new technologies capable of inspecting moving foils for micro- and nanoscale dust particles and defects, and for cleaning / repairing layers as necessary. It will also explore techniques for preventing dust particles reaching the foil in roll-to-roll environments.
“The EU recognized an urgent need for these technologies, and that developing them here will provide long-term opportunities for Europe’s instrumentation and equipment industries. Clean4Yield will deploy a holistic approach to address problems that are common to both OLEDs and OPVs, and which have relevance to other areas of flexible electronics,” said project coordinator Juliane Gabel of Holst Centre.
BACKGROUND
The Clean4Yield consortium covers the entire value chain including materials and equipment suppliers, device producers and end users. It brings together multi-national companies, small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), universities and research organizations. The sixteen consortium members are:
TNO / Holst Centre (Netherlands)
Coatema Coating Machinery GmbH (Germany)
Dr. Schenk GmbH Industriemesstechnik (Germany)
Technical University of Denmark (Denmark)
DuPont Teijin Films (United Kingdom)
Horiba Jobin Yvon SAS (France)
IBS Precision Engineering (Netherlands)
Teknek Limited (United Kingdom)
InnoPhysics BV (Netherlands)
Philips Technologie GmbH (Germany)
Bayer MaterialScience (Germany)
Eight19 Limited (United Kingdom)
Bayer Technology Services (Germany)
Thermosensorik GmbH (Germany)
Delft University of Technology (Netherlands)
Orbotech Inc. (Israel)
With more than 4000 professionals, TNO is the largest Dutch organization for applied research. TNO’s activities within Clean4Yield are being conducted by its research division at Holst Centre.
