Manufacturing Award at Printed Electronics and Photovoltaics USA 2010. The prize is awarded for exceptional work on developing high-efficiency components and manufacturing technologies for flexible electronics. AIXTRON has received the award for its OVPD® process1, an enabling technology for manufacturing OLEDs and other applications in organic electronics.

Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman of IDTechEX, presented the award at the fourth IDTechEx Awards Dinner in Santa Clara, USA, in December 2010. “The process technology used by AIXTRON is unique and helps to bring organic light emitting diodes to market,” was the jury's assessment. “The future-compliant preparation in the vapor phase obtains high deposition rates, best use of materials and optimum layer composition", it added.

Unlike LEDs, which are a point-like light source, OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes) are a flat source emitting diffuse light. It is predicted that OLEDs will deliver completely novel lighting applications. AIXTRON equipment for the deposition of organic material films utilizes the innovative process2 licensed exclusively by UDC for Organic Vapor Phase Deposition (OVPD®) as well as AIXTRON´s novel Polymer Vapor Phase Deposition (PVPD)3.

Jürgen Kreis, Senior Department Manager Business Development, AIXTRON SE; Dr Peter Harrop, Chairman of IDTechEx at the awards ceremony.

“This award – which we are delighted to receive – confirms our view that our technologies are superior to conventional processes and can help to cut manufacturing costs substantially, for instance in the production of OLEDs. We see enormous potential for the manufacture of new types of flexible material films. As a key system supplier we will therefore continue to push organic thin-film applications and of course, OLEDs as well," says Jürgen Kreis, Senior Department Manager Business Development at AIXTRON.

One of the locations where AIXTRON technologies are in use is on a production line at Plastic Logic in Dresden, where they make a major contribution to the manufacture of flexible, organic backplanes (OTFT4), e.g., for e-reader applications. The potential of this new type of vapor phase technology for organic materials is constantly being improved in a number of research projects. Future implementations also address roll-to-roll processing of functional organic films on flexible substrates, with applications in organic photovoltaics, flexible electronics, in flexible displays and functional interfaces such as touch panels.

“Credit for the award is also due to research projects funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the EU,” says Jürgen Kreis, “because the results are used in further development of our OVPD® technology.” The objective of these publicly-funded projects is to exploit the considerable market potential for organic LEDs by developing the physical-technical basis, while securing an international top spot for Germany on the world market.

More information on the projects funded by the BMBF:

So-Light: www.so-light.de and TOPAS: www.osram.de

1OVPD®, Organic Vapor Phase Deposition

2 OVPD technology has been exclusively licensed to AIXTRON from Universal Display Corporation (UDC), Ewing, N.J. USA for equipment manufacture. OVPD technology is based on an invention by Professor Stephen R. Forrest et al. at Princeton University, USA, which was exclusively licensed to UDC. AIXTRON and UDC have jointly developed and qualified OVPD pre-production equipment.

3 PVPD, Polymer Vapor Phase Deposition

4 OTFT, Organic Thin Film Transistor

For more information on AIXTRON (FWB: AIXA, ISIN DE000A0WMPJ6; NASDAQ: AIXG, ISIN US0096061041), please visit www.aixtron.com.