In an exciting new study, researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have succeeded in printing an OLED screen completely in 3D. This development could lead to the proliferation of low-cost OLED displays in the future, where a human can be widely produced at home using a 3D printer instead of technicians producing them in expensive microfabrication facilities.
OLED display technology is based on the conversion of electricity into light using a layer of organic material. OLEDs function as high-quality digital displays that can be made flexible and can be used both in large-scale devices such as television screens and monitors, and in handheld electronic devices such as smartphones. So, let’s take a look at how the researchers managed to produce OLED in a 3D printer.
The screen has 64 pixels and is 1.5 inches in size.
OLED displays are used in many devices today due to their light weight, power efficiency, thin and flexible, wide viewing angle and high contrast ratio.
In this new research, the University of Minnesota research team combined two different printing modes to print six device layers, resulting in a fully 3D-printed flexible organic light-emitting diode display (OLED). The electrodes, interconnects, insulation and encapsulation were all extruded, while the active layers were spray printed using the same 3D printer at room temperature.
The screen prototype is about 1.5 inches in size and 64 pixels on each side and every pixel of the prototype worked and managed to show light. The 3D-printed screen is also flexible and can be used with an encapsulating material, which could make it useful for a wide variety of applications, the researchers said.
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