Aristotle University, AIXTRON Collaborate in SMARTONICS Project

AIXTRON SE announced that the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and AIXTRON will closely cooperate in the European SMARTONICS project started in January 2013. The project’s main focus is to propel market penetration of organic electronics.

“SMARTONICS pursues a comprehensive set of ambitious goals,” Professor Stergios Logothetidis, director of Laboratory for Thin Films – Nanosystems & Nanometrology (LTFN) , at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, said. “Under the project’s scope, a variety of novel organic materials will be developed and processes optimized through computational modelling. For production processes, we will predominantly concentrate our efforts on AIXTRON’s proprietary OVPD evaporation process as well as on roll-to-roll printing machines combined with precision optical sensing tools and laser processes.”

“As a leading equipment manufacturer, AIXTRON highly appreciates being recognized for contributing its unique expertise in the deposition of organic materials to SMARTONICS,” said Dr. Bernd Schulte, executive vice president and COO at AIXTRON. “Organic electronics is a significant and important market, and this project offers an excellent opportunity to qualify our technology for applications that show considerable potential for the future of organic electronics.”

“Our concept has been chosen due to its disruptive approach and its potential to trigger a paradigm shift,” Juergen Kreis, director of business development and responsible for AIXTRON’s organic electronics business, added. “In the frame of this project, AIXTRON will develop a small R&D cluster system based on its proprietary OVPD technology. The equipment will use AIXTRON’s latest 200 mm-R&D platform, optimized and qualified for manufacturing of organic photovoltaic devices.”

The SMARTONICS consortium consists of eight industrial partners, four research institutes and six universities, spread across Europe. Through December 2016, the project partners will investigate how existing production and process technologies in the field of organic electronics can be further improved.