Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) and Sumitomo Chemical have confirmed that their Joint Venture company, Sumation, commenced trading on November 14th 2005.

Sumation supplies polymers and formulated inks for use in both development and commercial P-OLED display and lighting applications. The company is headquartered in Tokyo, and has an R & D team located in both the UK and Japan, while production of polymer materials will take place under sub contract at the Sumitomo Chemical plant in Osaka.

The company will reduce its research and development spending to 7 percent of sales from 8 percent by forming alliances with other manufacturers. Under the plan, Pioneer will also reduce the number of products it makes for other companies and withdraw from the business of making panels using AM-OLED technology.

The opening of Singapore's first manufacturing plant for OLEDs, has given the republic a jumpstart in the race to produce new generation flat display panels.

Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang made this comment at the official opening of NESS Display's new S$100 million factory in Tampines on Wednesday.

Plastic Logic announced today that it has developed the world's largest flexible organic active matrix display. The display consists of a flexible, high resolution, printed active-matrix backplane driving an electronic paper frontplane from US-based E Ink Corporation.

The display will be shown at the 12th International Displays Workshop in Takamatsu, Japan from December 6/9. Dr Seamus Burns, Plastic Logic's Group Leader for Displays, will give a presentation describing the new display in the Sunport Hall Takamatsu Main Hall on Wednesday 7 December 2005 at 09.50. The displays are 10" diagonal SVGA (600 by 800) with 100ppi resolution and 4 levels of greyscale. The thickness of the display when laminated with E-Ink Imaging Film(TM) is less than 0.4mm. The backplane substrate is made from low temperature PET supplied by DuPont Teijin Films which is more flexible and easier to handle than alternatives such as thin glass or steel foil.

National Semiconductor Corp has introduced a small dual step-up DC-DC converter that drives up to five white LEDs with a constant current or an organic LED display with a constant voltage.

Well-suited for handheld devices such as flip and clam-shell cell phones and digital cameras, the LM3520 step-up converter uses pulse width modulation (PWM) mode to drive the LEDs and pulse frequency modulation (PFM) mode to drive the organic LED display. When driving the LEDs, a single external resistor is used to set the maximum LED current. The actual LED current and the brightness can be adjusted by applying a PWM signal to the enable pin. When the LED drive is disabled, the LED string is disconnected on the low side so that there is no leakage current through the LEDs.

Novaled raised €15 million in its second round of financing.Novaled GmbH has closed the round with an international investment syndicate lead by the venture branch of Credit Agricole Private Equity, Paris, completed by venture funds of Caisse des Depots et Consignations (CDC Entreprises Innovation), Paris, KfW Bankengruppe, Bonn, eCapital New Technologies Fonds AG, Muenster, and a German private investor. "

We believe that OLED will become in the near term a widespread technology. We have been strongly impressed by the management team, by the disruptive IP and the technology from Novaled. We are pleased to support Novaled in becoming a world leader in the OLED industry." says Guillaume Dupont, Associate at Credit Agricole Private Equity.