Ron Mertens from OLED-Info.com recently had the opportunity to interview Myrddin Jones, OLED-T's new CEO.
OLED-T is engaged with research, development and commercialization of a pioneering class of OLED materials, called ELAMATES®. For more information on OLED-T, check out the corporate background and technological background documents they sent us.
Q: Myrddin, First of all, thank you for accepting to do this interview session with us... Now, obviously there are many OLED IP and material companies out there. What makes OLED-T unique? What are the advantages of your materials and IP?
OLED-T lead electron transporter material can replace existing standard materials using the same production process and offer advantages in terms of efficiency, voltage, colour and lifetime as a direct result even with no other changes in materials or structure. In addition, OLED-T has prototype display production in-house allowing optimum structures to be developed and proposed to customers. See attached technology overview.
Q: You recently secured a $7 million financing round, which will be used to bolster your team and open a new R&D facility. Can you give more details?
We will announce our expanded facility in the next few weeks.
Q: You changed your name recently to OLED-T (from ELAM-T). Why did you do it?
The name change is a reflection of our commercial intent. Prof. Kathir established ELAM-T in 1999, but as the company has evolved in the past seven years (as illustrated by the investment we have received) we took the decision to re-position the company in alignment with our focus on the OLED market.
Q: You are involved in researching environmental friendly materials... This is very interesting. Can you explain this a bit?
The focus of our development is the improvement of display performance. In some cases we found the materials to be less toxic than currently used OLED materials but this had not been the main goal of the development.
Q: You supply several kinds of OLED materials including phosphorescent based OLEDs. Are you a Universal Display (UDC) licensee?
OLED-T materials are not licensed from any other company.
Q: Do you have any clients for your materials? Are there are consumer products using your materials?
At this time, we have been in discussions with a number of Asian display manufacturers and they are evaluating our materials. Due to the make up of our solutions, customers do not have to purchase all of our materials to manufacture a display. We supply non-proprietary materials so manufacturers can select just one layer of the OLED sandwich, such as the electron transporter. A Japanese display manufacturer is currently in pre-production with our materials but at this time I cannot divulge any more information about our client portfolio.
Q: What does the future holds for OLED-T?
OLED-T's priority is to establish volume sales of materials with display manufacturers. Based on this the company plans to establish itself as a key supplier of materials to the OLED industry.
Q: Where do you see the OLED market in a few years?
The AMOLED market will grow rapidly enabling the manufacture of larger full color displays. As a result, OLEDs will be used in mainstream volume products such as mobile phones.
There are numerous new opportunities open to us, but perhaps the most interesting is backlighting. We are able to blend RGB colours to produce a true white light that could be deployed as a backlight in LCD displays, or for car dashboards (for example). Using OLEDs in this way would reduce costs dramatically due to the smaller component count etc.
Q: When do you estimate that you will be able to purchase an OLED display for your computer, laptop or TV?
As with LCD technology, it is likely that OLED technology will migrate step by step from small to medium to large display implementation. Large OLED displays have already been demonstrated but it is likely to be 5 years before they can be produced with the high yields necessary to compete with LCD products.
Thank you again for your time, I wish both you and OLED-T good luck!
