DisplaySearch has updated its 2006 OLED Technology Report, a comprehensive examination of the fledgling OLED industry, which reached revenues of $491M in 2005, up 8% Y/Y, and unit shipments of 55.8M, up 72%. Updates are due to a number of recent changes affecting the OLED industry: Liquidation of SK Display, TMDisplay and Seiko Epson de-emphasizing commercialization of AMOLEDs, Pioneer closing its ELDis JV and the concurrent end of its AMOLED activity, Sharp reduction in small/medium panel ASPs due to over capacity in TFT LCDs, Continuing difficulty in using LTPS backplanes for AMOLEDs.

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. The report shows the status of material development, manufacturing (both evaporation and ink-jet printing) and the proposed solutions to high yielding a-Si and p-Si backplanes.

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The new Citizen Bluetooth-enabled watch (The W700 model) is now on sale in Japan (5,000 units only). The watch displays incoming calls from your mobile phone, while vibration technology as well as flashing lights serve as call indicators. Additionally, an optional alert is available to warn you if you leave your phone behind.

A small OLED display shows the caller id. The watch is large (40 mm x 42.4 mm x 46.6 mm) and weighs 55 grams. The battery is said to last five days, and the unit comes in black or silver.

Philips and Novaled reached a new record for the power efficiency of a white OLED, obtaining 32 lm/W with colour coordinates of 0,47/0,45 and a CRI of 88 at a brightness of 1000 cd/m2. That same device structure thereby simultaneously shows a lifetime of more than 20000 hours which is a major achievement for a future commercialization of the OLED technology for lighting applications.

The efficiency of the device was measured using an integrating sphere using only the forward emission cone of the OLED device without attaching any lens or any other volume type luminaire to the OLED device. This is the only method to reliably predict power efficiency values for large area lighting tiles.

The company has also chalked out plans for the commercial production of organic light emitting diodes (OLED) screens, which it has developed in collaboration with IIT, Kanpur, and Department of Science and Technology, in another 18 months.

Cambridge Display Technology and Litrex Corporation are paving the way for the production of a new generation of high resolution polymer organic light emitting displays (PLED, or P-OLED) through the development of an inkjet printing solution capable of producing PLED displays at up to 200 pixels per inch (ppi).

Cambridge Display Technology announces the sale of a sophisticated Eclipse display test system to Merck OLED Materials GmbH, based in Frankfurt, Germany. The equipment will be used to enhance productivity in the development and evaluation of materials for organic light emitting diode displays. The Eclipse system to be supplied to Merck consists of 192 digital source-measure channels and associated hardware and software, some of which has been customized for Merck's particular requirements.

Cambridge Display Technology and Toppan Printing, the leading information and communications company of Tokyo, Japan, have produced a number of 5.5 inch full color active matrix polymer OLED (PLED) displays using a roll printing method. A demonstrator will be shown at the SID conference in San Francisco. The displays - believed to be the first of their type ever produced - are the result of close co-operation between the two companies and part of their joint development activity announced in February 2005.

Solution processing of PLED (also called P-OLED) displays is more commonly associated with inkjet printing, and the companies believe that roll printing represents a promising alternative production technique which offers the potential for very good display uniformity, very high display resolution and low capital and operating costs. In the future, this type of roll printing process could be well suited for making flexible P-OLED displays. CDT believes that this combination of properties can only be achieved with solution-based printing processes.

Universal Display will unveil a new deep red PHOLED material system with excellent luminous efficiency, 15 candelas per Ampere (cd/A), that corresponds to 19% external quantum efficiency.
In addition, the Company is reporting advancements in device architecture designs that lead to significantly extended lifetimes.

The Company is also demonstrating novel device architectures that provide significant enhancements in color saturation. By comparison to yellow-green color in a standard bottom-emitting OLED structure, the same PHOLED material system offers a saturated green color, with CIE coordinates of (0.25, 0.72), in a cavity-tuned, top-emission structure. (In a bottom-emitting structure, this system offers luminous efficiency of 71 cd/A and 100,000 hours of operating lifetime at 1,000 cd/m(2).)
As will be reported, Universal Display has developed device architectures to improve the luminous efficiency of its sky blue PHOLED material by 50%, to 30 cd/A, with 100,000 hours of operating lifetime at 200 cd/m(2).

Dr. Anna Chwang will present advances in the development of a top-emitting, active-matrix OLED display built on flexible metal foil using the Company's proprietary OLED technologies. The 100 ppi QVGA OLED display is integrated onto a poly-silicon TFT backplane developed by Palo Alto Research Center (PARC).

Eastman Kodak received a more than $1.17 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for a project to increase performance of OLED technology.

Kodak's proposal, approved by the Energy Department, aims to increase performance in OLEDs to 50-lumens per watt. The total cost of the 24-month project is $1.95 million, with Kodak paying 40 percent, or more than $770,000.

TMDisplay's advanced OLED display technology is represented at SID 2006 for mobile applications by a high-luminescence, extremely thin and lightweight 3.46-inch QVGA LTPS AMOLED, which has the vivid image quality desired for ultra-portable media players and other A/V applications.

A 2.2-inch QVGA LTPS display from the same family demonstrates the excellent image quality possible using an AMOLED as the main display in cell phone applications. A third 2.5-inch display (not exhibited) for digital still camera applications rounds out the current family of LTPS AM-OLEDs that TMD is starting to develop. LTPS AMOLEDs offer multiple advantages over today's conventional TFT LCD technologies, including self-emitting light (eliminating the CCFL inverter or LED driver circuitry); thinner, lighter weight displays (because no backlight is required); ultra-fast response time; ultra-wide viewing angles; and rich color chromaticity.

MagnaChip announced that the company established an R&D Center in Tokyo, Japan, for its Large Display Driver IC (DDI) business.

The new R&D center's strategic location will enable MagnaChip to even more effectively target the broader Asian Market. The focus will be on providing dedicated research and development of large TFT-LCD and OLED drivers ICs for larger applications such as TV and PC monitors. The center is staffed by seven technology, development and engineering experts from the local Japanese market. Several application engineers are expected to be added later in the year.