OLAtronics Project Development and integration of processes & technologies for the production of Organic Low-cost & large-Area flexible Electronics During the last years, there has been a rapidly expanding effort for the development of the materials and processes for the manufacturing of electronic devices based on organic thin film materials. The wide implementation of active (organic semiconductors) and passive (barrier, electrode) materials for the manufacturing of Flexible Organic Electronic Devices (such as Electrochromic-EC and Photovoltaic-OPV devices) will be defined on the ability to synthesize, prepare and encapsulate these devices using low-cost and large-scale roll-to-roll (r2r) technologies. The above mentioned issues will be addressed by the STREP Project OLAtronics (“Development and integration of processes & technologies for the production of Organic Low-cost & large-Area flexible Electronics”), a three year duration research project that started in January 2008 and is funded by the FP7 ICT of the European Commission. OLAtronics is targeted towards the development of large-area and low-cost manufacturing technologies (e.g. printing) and encapsulation of active and passive materials towards high added-value material components and products that will put a major thrust towards the reinforcement of the European Industry’s competitiveness in organic and large-area electronics. The objectives of OLAtronics Project are: a) The development and optimization of production processes for active and passive materials by establishing an effective combination of vacuum, wet and printing methods to provide materials with advanced properties, performance, stability and lifetime, low-cost and large-area processing, b) Effective encapsulation of the developed active and passive materials into components, and their large-scale fabrication onto flexible r2r substrates combined to real-time monitoring and control of materials process and quality by in-line optical techniques, c) Integration of the developed manufacturing technologies into a pilot-scale to allow the low-cost and large-area manufacturing of prototype device demonstrators, ultimately in large scale. d) Continuous adaptation of exploitation strategy by industrial partners. This will be due to the progress of the different tasks and may include novel materials and processes with high impact on device performance, i.e. life-time stability. The OLAtronics Project is coordinated by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, with the scientific responsible Professor Stergios Logothetidis. The OLAtronics Consortium also includes the following partners: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (Institutes of IVV, ISC, IAP) (Germany), Horiba Jobin Yvon (France), Siemens (Germany), Alcan Technology & Management Ltd (Switzerland), H.C.Starck (Germany) and Konarka Technologies Inc. (USA and Austria). Keywords Organic Electronics Countries Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Greece, France, United States
