Researchers Showcase the First Fully-3D-Printed, Flexible OLED Display Panel — with More to Come
"It's not hard to imagine that you could translate this to printing all kinds of displays ourselves at home," says senior author.
A team of researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have customized an admittedly high-end 3D printer to create what they claim is the world's first fully-3D-printed flexible organic LED (OLED) display panel.
"OLED displays are usually produced in big, expensive, ultra-clean fabrication facilities," explains Michael McAlpine, professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the study's senior author. "We wanted to see if we could basically condense all of that down and print an OLED display on our table-top 3D printer, which was custom built and costs about the same as a Tesla Model S."
The six-layer printed panel combines two separate 3D printing methods: The electrodes, interconnects, insulation, and encapsulation layers were created using extrusion printing; the active layers were spray-printed — using the same 3D printer, and at room temperatures.
"I thought I would get something, but maybe not a fully working display," admits Ruitao Su, PhD, first author of the paper. "But then it turns out all the pixels were working, and I can display the text I designed. My first reaction was 'it is real!' I was not able to sleep, the whole night."
The wholly-printed panel is, admittedly, somewhat rudimentary: Measuring 1.5 inches on a side, it boasts a mere 64 pixels total — but proved how robust the method could be by surviving a test of 2,000 bending cycles. "[It suggests] that fully 3D printed OLEDs can potentially be used for important applications in soft electronics and wearable devices," says Su.
"The nice part about our research is that the manufacturing is all built in, so we're not talking 20 years out with some 'pie in the sky' vision," claims McAlpine of the team's hopes to print brighter and higher-resolution panels using the same method. "This is something that we actually manufactured in the lab, and it is not hard to imagine that you could translate this to printing all kinds of displays ourselves at home or on the go within just a few years, on a small portable printer."
The paper is available under open-access terms in the journal Science Advances.