Solution based OLEDs - Page 5

DisplayCentral posted an interesting article on LG Display's OLED TV program. The author reports from a discussion he had with Changho Oh, Senior VP for LG Display’s OLED TV Development Division, in which Changho says that LGD is investing heavily in soluble OLED production and aims to have such panels available in 2018.

A few days ago we reported that an LG Display researcher revealed that the company is developing a roll-to-roll process to produce flexible OLED displays. This is one of several possible printing technologies that can make soluble OLED panels possible.

In early 2014, Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical announced that they began to mass produce OLED lighting modules made with a "wet coating system". Soluble OLED processes should offer a great production cost reduction - but Mitsubishi's panel suffered from limited lifetime (15,000 hours).

According to a new report from Japan, Mitsubishi managed to double the lifetime, and their newest panels offer 30,000 hours. This was achieved by new longer-lasing OLED materials and a different device structure. Mitsubishi already shipped panel samples to lighting equipment makers and will setup up their marketing effort soon via their Pioneer JV (MC Pioneer OLED Lighting).

In the past two years, Evonik and the Holst Centre has been developing a new soluble Oxide-TFT material and a slot-die coating deposition process. Evonik is now commercializing the so-called iXsenic S material. In fact Evonik says that a key customer is introducing the product in a mass production display fab (it is unknown if this line produces OLED or LCD displays).

Evonik says that their new material offers a performance good enough for high-resolution OLED and LCD displays, and it can be deposited in a coating process which lowers production costs.

OSRAM is one of the leaders in OLED lighting (apparently focused on the automotive market), and currently the produce all their OLEDs using an evaporation process. But according to a new job post, the company is starting to research wet-deposition of OLED materials.

OSRAM is looking for a PhD candidate that will work on a pre-development project involving wet-deposition of OLED materials. The challenge is to find the right process and material and process for each layer in the OLED lighting device. OSRAM specifically mentions screen printing, intaglio printing, flexograph and inkjet printing.

Philips' OLED lighting division has a new head of Marketing and Business Development - Jay Kim. Before he was responsible for OLED product marketing, business development, MarCom and customer services functions globally, Jay headed Philips' industry segment marketing in Europe involving Philips LED luminaries, lighting controls and services. And he was kind enough to agree to this interview here at OLED-Info.

Q: Jay - thanks for your time. Let's jump, shall we? In March 2014 Philips announced the FL300, your brightest OLED yet at 300 lumens. Any updates on this panel? Is it still on track for Q3?

We are very happy with the performance of the new Brite FL300 and its acceptance in the market. Already before official market introduction at Light+Building we have had three designs where the brightest OLED on the market is used. Italian furniture maker Riva1920 uses our OLED in its K BLADE lamp, an exceptional beautiful wooden desk lamp combining 48,000 years old Kauri wood from New Zealand with the world’s most modern lighting technology OLED. Besides that, German Designer Thomas Emde is using the Brite FL300 in its new series of OLED luminaires sold under the label OMLED. In addition, he is working closely together with Italian luminaire manufacturer Luceplan. Together they bring the OLALAL OLED luminaire to the market. Also, many of our customers with designs based on the Lumiblade GL350 OLED are going to switch to the new OLED as well.

Since they launched the world's first OLED TV in August 2013, LG managed to slash the price from $14,999 to about $4,000 (currently the EA9800 costs $4,299 in Amazon.com). We all hope LG will continue to lower the price, obviously, so it's good to hear that LGD's Byeonggyu Roh says that they will continue to reduce the cost of their OLED TV panel production.

According to UBI Research, LGD ultimate goal is to reach a price premium of only 10% over LCDs. LG needs to lower the costs across the board - taking advantage of existing LCD lines and equipment, optimizing the thickness of all th display layers (TFT, organic materials and encapsulation), improving the production process times and more.

Researchers from UCLA developed an amorphous oxide semiconductor thin-film transistors (backplane) for LCD and OLED displays. The transistors were produced using a solution process and feature a specially-designed layer with ultra-high density and high electron mobility.

The researchers say that their new process does not require a clean room or expensive equipment, and so can enable a high-performance device that is simple and cheap to produce. The new device offers an electron mobility that is 10 to 20 times greater than a-Si TFTs. It is composed of indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) and indium tin zinc oxide, (ITZO).

Merck announced that the PrintOLED project successfully concluded. During the project, the partners investigate several technologies (such as gravure, inkjet printing, slot-die coating and others) and were able to demonstrated OLEDs with homogeneously coated active areas of 10 cm² and 27 cm² by classic gravure printing and slot die coating (at least two of the layers were processed from solution).

Merck says that printing two organic layers one on top of the other was a major challenge. The partners achieved significant improvements with specific material sequences. They say that they managed to print with speeds of up to 3 m/s semiconducting OLED layers with a homogeneity meeting the quality standards of industrial-scale OLED production. The knowledge was also applied to OPV and sDSC solar cells.

Merck published an article on OLEDs in their Explorer Magazine, and in that article they reveal that AU Optronics is developing OLED ink-jet technologies with help from Merck.

AUO developed their own inkjet printer (with collaboration with suppliers), and they used it to develop a 14" printable OLED panel. Merck is working closely with AUO to supply them with soluble OLED materials. There's no word yet on how close this technology is for commercialization yet, and Merck did not reveal any details (or even a photo) of the 14" panel.

A couple of months ago we reported that printed electronics developer Plextronics filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as they failed to find a buyer or an investor.

Today Solvay (an investor in Plextronics together with Samsung and Universal Display) announced that they acquired Plextronics. Solvay did not reveal the financial details but in January it was reported that Solvay offered $24 million to extinguish debt and $8.5 in cash to acquire the company.