Upscaling of blue elementary emitter to revolutionize OLED manufacturing

Descripción del proyecto

El azul llega a las pantallas OLED

La luz azul ha sido durante mucho tiempo el punto débil de la tecnología OLED. Los emisores azules actuales son ineficaces, agotan las baterías, aumentan el consumo de energía y provocan el «quemado» de la pantalla, lo que acorta la vida útil del dispositivo. Dichos inconvenientes han reducido la adopción de los televisores OLED. A pesar de años de investigación, sigue sin conseguirse un emisor azul estable y eficiente para su producción a gran escala. El proyecto beeUP, financiado por la Consejo Europeo de Innovación, está ayudando a beeOLED a comercializar este avance. En concreto, el emisor azul intenso de beeOLED, basado en europio divalente (Eu2+) y cerio trivalente (Ce3+), proporciona pantallas OLED más brillantes, duraderas y eficientes energéticamente. Al estabilizar Eu2+ y Ce3+ por primera vez, el equipo ha creado una tecnología patentada lista para su escalado industrial, lo que supone un gran paso hacia pantallas más sostenibles y de alto rendimiento.

Objetivo

In OLED, blue has been the critical weak point ever since the commercialization of OLED displays. Because of the inefficient blue emitters still used today, OLED TVs receive poor energy star ratings and smartphones run out of battery quickly. Additionally, their poor stability results in “burn in”, which, for example, requires smart watches to be dimmed down most of the time. Market penetration of OLED in TV is therefore stuck at 3-5%. Given the importance of blue emitters for the OLED market (and the resulting commercial attractiveness), numerous attempts have been made in the last 20 years to solve this problem. However, neither startups nor large corporates have been able to present a solution viable for high-volume manufacturing. Especially scaling up a promising material from laboratory scale to mass production is still a major hurdle for most solutions.
beeOLED is solving the last big problem of the OLED industry - a highly efficient, long lasting, deep-blue emitter. Building on 20 years of OLED industry experience, the founding team of beeOLED has rediscovered an almost forgotten star amongst the display materials: divalent Europium (Eu2+). Leveraging the latest advances in Europium chemistry, beeOLED managed, for the first time ever, to stabilize Eu2+ such that it becomes usable in OLEDs. The fundamental concept is protected by several base patents, solely owned by beeOLED. beeOLED’s technology enables OLED displays with significantly improved efficiency, brightness and chemical stability at lower overall costs due to a less complex device structure.
The overall OLED materials market is valued today at US$1.7bn/y with a CAGR of 15%. Initially, beeOLED will focus on the OLED emitter dopant materials, which is a highly promising market with strong profit margins. After successfully scaling up the production, the goal of beeOLED is to achieve a dominant position in this market with the vision to become the No .1 OLED emitter material provider in 2030.