SmartLine addresses the challenges that are faced by Europe’s industrial stakeholders that aim to bring the innovations in Organic and Large Area Electronics (OLAE) to the market, by the cost-effective manufacturing of advanced OLAE-enabled products in the application areas of energy, lighting, displays and surfaces, electronic circuits, all (bio) sensors, wearables, ICT, IoT, etc. OLAE combines organic, polymer, inorganic and hybrid nano-materials in multilayer nano-structures that can be combined by large-scale manufacturing to conformable & lightweight devices with main applications for energy harvesting by sunlight (Organic Photovoltaic -OPVs) and light emission (Organic Light Emission Diodes - OLED for lighting), to name just a few.
However, until now, the faced bottlenecks and challenges to enable fast OLAE-enabled product commercialization include the 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 addressed successfully the above challenges and provided efficient metrology solutions to industry in order to achieve a strong productivity improvement for the fabrication of flexible OLAE devices (such as OPVs, OLEDs). During its implementation, SmartLine developed 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.
The objectives of the project are the following:
O1: Development of robust non-destructive metrology tools and methodologies (acquisition, modelling, reference), for the monitoring of properties (optical, electrical, etc.), structure (surface patterns), and quality of OLAE nanolayers in complex & highly integrated nano-scale architectures with high precision. These in-line metrology tools include: a) Spectroscopic Ellipsometry (SE), b) Raman Spectroscopy (RS), c) In-line Reflectometry (REF), d) Wavelength Scanning Interferometry (WSI) for surface features, and e) Eddy Current (EC) measurement system.
O2: Integration of in-line metrology tools in specific parts of unique R2R printing and OVPD pilot to production lines to enable closed-loop fabrication of OPV and OLED devices, that will enable better resource efficiency and increased device reproducibility, yield and productivity
O3: Development of robust feedback and control Platform (MCP) to connect the in-line metrology tools with the R2R and OVPD processes to achieve autonomous control of the manufacturing process and predictive/preventive corrections to the R2R printing and OVPD processes
O4: Optimization of manufacturing processes for OPVs and OLEDs and boost of process yield and device quality, in combination to reduced waste and process time. Validation of the reliability and quality of devices by demonstration to automotive applications (exterior, interior).
