LG.Philips announced today that it has entered an evaluation agreement for active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) development with Eastman Kodak Company. Under the terms of the agreement, LG.Philips LCD and Kodak will jointly evaluate display technologies for mobile displays and consider other opportunities, including the development and supply of AMOLED technology and products.

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Ness Display, a developer of organic light emitting diode (OLED) display technology, is the first Korean firm to establish overseas an OLED manufacturing operation. The OLED manufacturing plant in Singapore started commercial production in December 2005. The company employs 140 staff at the Singapore plant, with 60 engineers managing the OLED linear source production system. The production capacity of the plant is expected to reach 1.6 million OLED display panels per month.

"We will concentrate on 1-inch to 2-inch mobile display panels, besides developing larger screens to match market requirements," said Kim Myung Jin, CEO of both Ness Display Singapore Pte Ltd and the parent company Ness Display Co Ltd.

NTERA and Seiko Epson today announced they have successfully produced working prototypes featuring the world's highest resolution naturally reflective electronic displays using NTERA's visualDNA(TM) brand electrochromic display technology. The prototypes feature 200 dpi and 400 dpi QVGA resolution and were produced using Epson's solution processable inkjet methods.

NTERA's technology reflects any ambient light, including bright sunlight, to make images always visible. It features ink-on-paper appearance at a fraction of the power consumption of existing electronic displays by eliminating backlights, a significant power drain in mobile devices. "Existing LCD and emerging OLED technologies fight the sun - we use it!" said Mr. Ritz.

CDT announced today that it has acquired an important portfolio of patent rights from Maxdem Inc. The portfolio includes five US patent applications and their foreign equivalents relating to new light emitting polymer compositions and applications. The deal also includes a license to a large number of patents / applications relating to polyphenylene polymers and other polymer compositions and purification methods. These are expected to be useful in future materials improvements.

Included in the acquisition from Maxdem is a patent application for the invention of phosphorescent compositions containing a critical class of polymer materials in combination with metals / metal ions. CDT believes this provides a fundamental position in the use of conjugated polymers to achieve high efficiency phosphorescent emission in solution processable devices, whether for ink jet printing or any other means of solution processing.

During a session at the Flexible Display Conference here earlier this week, a presentation updating the cost model in roll-to-roll manufacturing painted a less-than-glowing picture of the technique. Presented by consulting firm Abbie Gregg Inc. (Tempe, Ariz.), the study concluded that a combination of high costs and poor availability of production tools are hindering the adoption of roll-to-roll manufacturing.

The study found that the tooling cost of setting an active-matrix flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) substrate line amounted to roughly $177 per square foot. The cost of tooling a passive-matrix polymer light-emitting diode (PLED) line is far less, at $45 per square foot.

DisplaySearch, an NPD Group Company and the worldwide leader in display market research and consulting, has released its 2006 OLED Technology Report. The report presents a comprehensive examination of the fledgling OLED industry, which reached revenues of over $500M in 2005 up 18% Y/Y. The OLED display makers are in transition from passive matrix to active matrix centricity, not unlike LCDs in the early to mid 1990s. The difference is that AMOLED display makers expect to ride the benefits of the existing TFT infrastructure created for LCDs. Two of the major players in OLEDs, Pioneer and Kodak, have recently announced changes in their strategies, shifting their emphasis away from the production of AMOLEDs. The report will show the impact of these changes and how other display makers will shift to AMOLEDs and the impact on the applications targeted by AMOLEDs. It forecasts display units and revenue by Application, Panel Size, Panel Resolution, Material Usage, Active vs. Passive Matrix Driver Technology, Small Molecule vs. P-OLED.

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In the paper titled Full Color 100 dpi AMOLED Displays on Flexible Stainless Steel Substrates, Dr. Anna Chwang will highlight the performance characteristics of a novel flexible, full-color AMOLED display prototype that is based on the Company’s proprietary phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED™), top-emitting OLED (TOLED®) and flexible OLED (FOLED®) technologies. The full-color AMOLED prototype also uses LTPS TFT backplanes designed and fabricated by PARC, a subsidiary of Xerox Corporation, and was encapsulated by Vitex Systems.

The four-inch diagonal display can portray a variety of images, including full-motion video. This advance is significant in proving the fundamental feasibility of the Company’s approach and also clearly demonstrates several key performance advantages. The display (without external drive electronics and package) is approximately 0.1 mm thick and weighs a mere 6 grams. The comparable glass-based LCD would be approximately 1.0-1.5 mm thick and weigh 20-30 grams. Research and development activities are continuing in a number of areas including enhanced display flexibility, defect elimination and enhanced electronics capabilities

Update: In March 2011, we posted a follow-up interview with Andy, updating us on Plextronics' business and technology.

OLED-Info.com recently had the opportunity to interview Andy Hannah, the CEO and President of Plextronics. Plextronics was founded in 2002, as a spin-out from Carnegie Mellon University, and is developing critical technology that enables broad market commercialization of organic electronic devices. Such devices include plastic chips, polymer solar cells and organic lights and sensors.

Q: You have developed an optimized hole injection layer for PLED devices. Can you explain that?

The hole injection layer or HIL functions as a gatekeeper that balances the flow of electricity into the OLED, improving the efficiency of generated light, and smoothing out any rough electrodes that would otherwise cause rapid device failure. Plextronics has developed Plexcore HIL, a non-acidic, solvent-based ink that when printed using spin-cast or inkjet techniques form carefully tuned thin-films that function as the HIL.

Working together with Univision of Taiwan, one the world's leading OLED manufacturers, Fiducia today announced the availability of a revolutionary long-life ultra-high-efficiency full-colour module, the UG2828. The module incorporates Univision's novel modified colour filter (MCF) technology that promises four times the efficiency compared with other similar technologies. Brightness is doubled using an equal drive voltage.

Displaying a full white screen at 100cd/m2, the MCF OLED only requires a power of 250mW.
In addition to power saving the MCF increases the colour purity to more than 80% of NTSC, allowing near true image reproduction on products using this technology.

GE Global Research is presenting details on its successful development of a substrate system for flexible OLEDs at the Flexible Displays & Microelectronics Conference, Feb. 6-9 in Phoenix, Ariz. The system features a developmental high-temperature Lexan polycarbonate (PC) film from GE - Plastics combined with a transparent, ultra-high-barrier coating to help protect the OLED device against oxygen and moisture.

This research, jointly funded by the U.S. Display Consortium (USDC) and GE, is designed to address the critical need for plastic substrates that can enable cost-effective, lightweight, flexible organic displays. Min Yan, GE materials scientist, will give a presentation on the new substrate system, which is currently being produced in batch mode and will ultimately be moved to a roll-to-roll process for cost efficiency. In addition, GE - Plastics is featuring a variety of plastic films for electrical/electronic display applications during the exhibition.