Case Study: Sharp Laboratories of Europe achieves faster, more accurate LED and display R&D with COMSOL Multiphysics

Supports lab’s multidisciplinary research and product development activities

Sharp Laboratories of Europe (SLE), Sharp’s Oxford R&D affiliate, faced the challenge of designing highly integrated, multidisciplinary electronics — from LED lighting and LCD pixels to microfluidic lab-on-a-chip systems and energy heat-exchange components — where interacting electrical, thermal, optical, and fluid processes must be modeled together. To address limitations of specialized tools and hand calculations, SLE turned to Comsol, using COMSOL Multiphysics (with LiveLink for SolidWorks, the AC/DC Module and ECAD import capabilities) to enable coupled multiphysics simulation across its projects.

Comsol’s solution let SLE perform electrical–thermal co‑simulation to optimize LED electrode designs, extract parasitic capacitances in LCD pixels with advanced meshing, model microfluidic droplet behavior to cut prototyping iterations, and simulate cooling-fluid dynamics in energy systems — yielding tangible gains such as a reported 30% efficiency improvement in a new cooling design, faster time to market for LEDs, and reduced R&D prototyping time and cost. Comsol’s tools therefore provided SLE with a versatile, cost‑effective research and product‑development capability across multiple technology areas.

Sharp Laboratories of Europe

Chris Brown

Research Manager