Fraunhofer FEP, MICROOLED S.A.S. Win Franco-German Business Award

The goal of the Franco-German award in business awarded by the Franco-German chamber of industry and commerce is to highlight collaborative efforts between French and German enterprises. The prize is awarded for “best practices” in four categories: Environment, Climate and Energy; Innovation, New Technologies, and Industry 4.0; and Industrial Collaboration/Start-Ups. Fraunhofer FEP and MICROOLED have been named as the winner in the New Technologies and Industry 4.0 category.
 
MICROOLED started as a start-up out of from CEA-LETI and Thomson back in 2007, and since that time has become one of the world’s leading suppliers of high-performance near-to-eye displays for near-to-the eye visualization e.g. in electronic viewfinders, head-mounted displays, Augmented Reality glasses etc. The Fraunhofer FEP Dresden for its part can look back on more than a decade of experience in research and development on OLED microdisplays.
 
MICROOLED and Fraunhofer have been working together already for several years in European funded projects in the field of design and technology of microdisplays. Since 2015, they started a bilateral collaboration on the development of a new type of microdisplay with ultra-low power consumption, approximately 100× lower compared to the state-of-the-art, based on an existing prototype at Fraunhofer. This new microdisplay has been transferred to the manufacturing line of MICROOLED located in Grenoble, France and is in production today.
 
The ultra-low-power microdisplay is based on a new concept integrating a memory function into the pixels and a new driving concept based on a differential update of information. This new approach allows to reduce power consumption of the display from typically 200 mW down to 2–3 mW.
 
“We are extremely pleased about this distinction and accept it on behalf of all of our colleagues who participated as recognition of our joint work,” said Dr. Gunther Haas, co-founder and CTO of MICROOLED. “It will spur us on to future projects for transferring Fraunhofer technologies to the market.”

Ultra-low power display. (Source: Fraunhofer FEP)