Design LED Products to collaborate in EU Light-Rolls manufacturing project

It has the potential to open up a wide range of applications through improved performance and reduced cost.” He continued, “In the near future we can visualise every house being lit by energy efficient and long-life time wall paper-like lighting films, delivered to your door in a roll for installation. Flexible electronics is an emerging market with a massive potential for roll-to-roll manufacturing and a huge range of possible applications, from displays, smart packaging & large area lighting panels including illuminated wallpaper.



This project is unique in that it seeks to integrated solid state LED chips and light-guides to achieve large area illumination. This differs significantly from electroluminescent film or the newer Organic LED technologies. While the base electronic and illumination technologies are proven, there is a growing need for a new manufacturing method and technology to support ultra-high volume production. Light-Rolls aims to offer a new unique production solution by applying new polymer based production methods, new chip assembly methods, optimized interconnection technologies in a Roll-to-Roll manufacturing process.



Roll-to-roll processing is best known for printing newspapers as well as packaging and assembly. The production process involves a roll of polymer film fed into a line of similar roll-to-roll processing equipment stages and finished product comes out in a roll at the end without any intervention.



Today, conventional printing industries are mature and have become a synonym for the highest degree of automation and highest speed of production throughput. For display and lighting panels, this promises to minimise the cost of production and maximise yield, allowing a wide scale adoption of flexible large area parts.