NANOHMICS INC — Department of Defense STTR Phase I: HR0011ST2022D-01

Description

A host of new integrated optics and photonics technologies and applications stand to benefit from transitioning the successes of lithographic patterning and vacuum thin film deposition to mass-producible, large-area conformable optoelectronic device manufacturing. However, present methods for large-area device manufacturing such as displays have severe limitations when serial patterning of each “color” pixel in the display array is required. Critical to this transformation will be the ability to use low-cost conventional printing and sintering technologies to pattern precursors of active-layer materials, including electroluminescent semiconductor QDs and other electroactive elements, onto a variety of substrates and subsequently “consolidate” the precursors into advanced structures such as QD emissive layer and charge transport layers and functional electro-optical LED devices. In some applications, a small performance tradeoff may be acceptable for a significant gain in cost savings, but the patterned and consolidated end product performance ultimately must be comparable to its high-cost, traditionally-manufactured counterpart. To achieve the goal of low-cost, high-yield manufacturing of high-resolution large-area bright and flexible QD-LEDs, Nanohmics, Inc., working in collaboration with Professor Anton Malko at UT Dallas has developed a novel method for encoded multiplexed RGB QD assembly and charge-transporting layers onto large-area, flexible substrates. The novel process will enable methods for high-density, “photonic” emitter pixel array structures using large-area, continuous-web manufacturing.