Chi Mei EL Corporation (CMEL) announced that it has successfully employed the latest low temperature poly-silicon thin film transistor (LTPS TFT) process technology from Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) together with its own organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) equipment and technology to develop a full-function, full-color 25" OLED TV panel.

This 25" OLED panel is currently the world's largest LTPS AMOLED panel. This successful application of new technologies from CMEL and CMO showcases CMEL's mature product development capabilities and advanced OLED process technology, as well as CMO's unique LTPS TFT process technology.

The new 25" AMOLED TV panel uses the latest LTPS TFT production technology developed by CMO to avoid non-uniform images that plague conventional LTPS TFT panels. Excessive critical voltage fluctuations often cause non-uniform images in conventional LTPS TFT panels; this typically results in a low production yield and difficulty in increasing panel size. CMO's LTPS TFT panel technology -- which ensures outstanding performance and consistency -- can be used in OLED TV panels offering extreme thinness, an ultra-wide viewing angle, ultra-high contrast, and ultra-fast response time. CMEL has also developed passive matrix OLED (PMOLED) products as well as 2.0" and 3.5" active matrix full-color OLED panels using CMO's unique LTPS TFT technology. CMEL will exhibit its new products from Oct.18 to Oct. 20 at the FPD International 2006 in Yokohama, Japan.

Art.Lebedev has launched a new blog about their Optimus Keyboard, and announced that the Optimus-113 keyboard will NOT use OLED displays after all.

"The price for the shipping unit remains withing range of a good mobile phone (but not $20,000 or $5,000 as some people may think after shopping for another Vertu).

And we had to make one very important decision during the engineering: we will not use OLED screens for the Optimus-113.

Another important thing: all keys will be replaceable."

Read more here 

Next Phase to Focus on Konica Minolta's Commercialization of All-Phosphorescent OLED Backlights and Other Lighting Products

Konica Minolta And UDC announced the strengthening of their collaboration to incorporate Universal Display's proprietary PHOLED(TM) phosphorescent OLED technology into Konica Minolta's white OLED devices. On June 30, 2006, Konica Minolta announced that it had successfully developed a white OLED with a power efficiency of 64 lumens per watt, which is four times the efficiency of standard incandescent bulbs. For this development, Universal Display's red and green PHOLED technology and materials have been used in conjunction with Konica Minolta's proprietary OLED technologies, such as its own blue phosphorescent materials and multi-layer design technologies.

Konica Minolta is currently accelerating its efforts to enable commercial manufacturing of white OLED devices for backlights in displays and for other lighting applications. These OLED devices are anticipated to use all phosphorescent materials.

OSD Displays has a new Low cost 1.5" 262K color OLED module. The display’s ultra-thin 1.60mm thick display lends well to next-generation ID, security cards, and programmable card and other audio and video applications.

Pricing starts at 1K $ 7.80 (FOB China).

See the attachment for more information (register to oled-info to view the attachment).

Universal Display Corporation announced that it has been awarded a $730,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract by the U.S. Army Research Laboratories (ARL) to continue its development of innovative encapsulation technology for flexible OLEDs.

In this program, entitled Flexible and Conformal Environmental Barrier Technology for Displays, Universal Display will be using a new approach to encapsulate a long-lived, active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) display prototype built on flexible metal foil. During the prior Phase I program, Universal Display and Princeton University demonstrated the feasibility of this multilayer encapsulation process based on plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (or PECVD). This technology, pioneered at Princeton University, is designed to enable the deposition of protective, barrier films onto an OLED’s top surface, a critical element on the development roadmap for flexible OLED displays.

At CEATEC 2006, Toshiba showed two AMOLED products: a 2.2" (240x320 pixels) and 3.5" (240x320 pixels as well) displays.

Universal Display Corporation today announced that it has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant for $750,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop power-efficient WOLED™ white OLED technology for future solid-state lighting applications.

Through this Phase II program, Universal Display is seeking to demonstrate novel WOLED device designs that offer further enhancements in power efficiency and operating lifetime based on the Company’s proprietary PHOLED technology.  The DOE has developed a technology roadmap suggesting a feasible path for white OLEDs to achieve power efficiencies of 100 to 150 lumens per Watt (lm/W).  Universal Display’s PHOLED technology is a critical element for achieving this goal.  The Company recently announced a white PHOLED with a power efficiency of more than 30 lm/W and external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 29 % at 850 nits, which the Company believes is the highest EQE reported to date.  Through programs such as this one, Universal Display hopes to achieve continued performance gains toward the DOE’s roadmap goals.

The new program will also leverage the Company’s proprietary OVPD™ organic vapor phase deposition processing technology.  OVPD technology offers the potential to optimize organic layer thicknesses, doping concentrations and the interfaces between the layers, and also to provide excellent film uniformity over large areas. 

Following quickly behind the recent announcement of rapid progress in the development of longer lifetime blue light emitting polymers, comes this announcement of similarly impressive progress on red materials.

Data from devices produced using these latest, solution processable, phosphorescent materials show lifetime of 98,900 hours from an initial luminance of 400 cd/m², equivalent to over 1.5 million hours from 100 cd/m².

iSuppli Corp. forecasts mobile handset displays will reach 1.2 billion unit shipments in 2006, up 17 percent from 1.05 billion in 2005. Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) main displays will represent a mere 1 percent of the main display market this year. By 2010, this mix will change, with TFT-LCDs representing 87 percent of the market, monochrome and color STN-LCDs comprising only 4 percent of shipments and 9 percent of the market being served by OLED main displays.

While TFT-LCDs will thrive in the mobile handset display market in the coming years, overall mobile OLED panel shipments will slowly climb to reach 47 million units shipped in 2006, up from 32 million units in 2005. The largest growth area for mobile-phone OLEDs will be in the main display market, where iSuppli forecasts shipments will grow to 160 million units by 2012, up from a mere 13.7 million units in 2006.

As AMOLED manufacturing becomes established, it will account for more than 20 percent of the OLED display units shipped by 2009 and about 40 percent of OLED display units shipped by 2012.