International. Spanish researchers have developed a hybrid in-mold manufacturing technology for LED screens that allows to reduce their cost by 40 percent and reduce polluting emissions by half during the manufacturing process.
Specifically, the development of the researchers of the plastic materials and sustainability unit of the Eurecat technology center (member of Tecnio), has allowed "to manufacture the optical and electronic part of the screens in a single step, through a process of overinjection of optics on printed electronics", according to Encarna Escudero, director of the plastic materials unit of Eurecat.
It is a pioneering hybrid production technology that "lowers production costs and makes the entire manufacturing process more efficient, a fact that promotes the increase in competitiveness of companies," adds Enric Pascual, a researcher at the unit.
Additionally, new techniques for recycling LED components have been developed, which will further reduce the environmental impact of this new technology. The sustainability unit of the technology center has studied the life cycle of the product to establish "new recycling techniques in a product with hybrid manufacturing with electronics and plastics," explained Maria Sedó, researcher at the sustainability unit.
The research has been carried out within the Optintegral consortium, led by Eurecat and in which nine partners from five European countries participate, which has developed high-efficiency technology for TOLAE LED screens (electronic, thin, organic and large dimensions) and photonic components for advertising purposes, manufactured with hybrid integration in printed electronics mold and the overinjection of optics, within the framework of the transition from Plasma technology to LCD and LED.
This allows the manufacturing process of these devices to be "more flexible and automated" and makes it "competitive with the labor costs of the European Union", according to Eduard Piqueras, technical coordinator of the project.
The project, which began in 2015 and was completed this January, has developed three demonstrator devices with the technology developed during the research and that could reach the market in a year, providing the economic and energy benefits of TOLAE technology, of flexible printed electronics of large dimensions.
On the one hand, a 2D screen of high resolution and large dimensions has been created with lighter and thinner backlighting than the current ones. Likewise, a high-density 3D LED screen has also been developed with a new lens system that allows to create the three-dimensional effect without the need for glasses, and a flexible RGB screen of large dimensions and reduced thickness.
In addition to Eurecat, the Optintegral consortium is participated by the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), the University of Bath, the Spanish Association for Standardization (UNE) and the companies Megatex, NeonElektro, SnellOptics and Holografika. The project has received funding through the Horizon 2020 program of the European Commission, under the grant agreement 643956 ─ Optintegral.
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