14 DAY TRIAL // Making devices that can bend, fold and roll up is something that technology experts and designers are very excited about. Even though the methods to do it reliably and in a viable way, marketing-wise, mostly don't exist yet.
Fortunately, there is always someone working on a problem, or a new approach to solve it. Someone or something like MIT spinout Kateeva.
Experts from Kateeva have come up with a new inkjet printing technology that can be used to finally solve the manufacturing problems of flexible OLEDs.
That has really been the only hurdle still not surmounted: price-viable mass production.
A new type of assembly line has been created, called YIELDjet. It is a massive inkjet 3D printer, to use the most straightforward terms.
Like one of those things people use to print out pages of text or pictures, only a lot larger and capable of using organic light emitting diodes as ink.
One of the tools included in the YIELDjet platform is the YIELDjet FLEX, for thin-film encapsulation that renders OLEDs flexible and thin.
The second tool is still under development, but should be ready later this year. It will reduce costs and defects that sprout up when patterning OLED materials onto substrates.