Germany Funds OLED Research

Applied Materials Inc., Merck KGaA and the Braunschweig University of Technology (TU-BS) announced that they have been awarded a grant by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to develop processes to lower the cost of manufacturing organic LED (OLED) lighting for general illumination applications. Applied will spearhead the three-year project, named Light InLine (LILi), joining forces with Merck, a maker of high-performance OLED materials, and TU-BS, an internationally recognized center for OLED research. Work on the LILi project will be centered at Applied Materials’ advanced development facility in Alzenau, Germany. The total cost of the OLED project will amount to approximately $11.21 million, which includes $4.88 million to be provided by the BMBF and $6.33 million to be contributed by the industry partners. The grant is part of the BMBF’s “OLED 2: Organic Light Emitting Diodes – Phase 2” initiative, which seeks to support OLED collaborative research and encourage OLED manufacturing in Germany.