February 2008

Europe joins forces in the form of a new integrated R&D project that aims to research and develop light emitting foils based on OLED technology. A group of 14 companies, research institutes and universities, leading in the fields of printing and electronics has formed the consortium of Fast2Light and will align efforts to demonstrate that high quality and cost-efficient lighting foils are the future for lighting and signage applications.

"The steady progress of light-emitting materials in recent years, identify OLED technology as the next solid-state, large-area light source. Within this project consortium we are able to combine European leading partners in the fields of printing, electronics and roll-to-roll processing and to create critical mass for the development of OLED lighting foils. Fast2light aims to set in place the manufacturing platforms so as to accelerate the introduction of lighting foils into the market when the light-emitting polymers meet the product specs" said Mary Kilitziraki of Holst Centre, project manager of Fast2Light.

The project, partially funded under European Union’s 7th Framework program as part of the ICT (Organic and large area electronics, visualisation and display systems) priority, will address all layers that are part of a lighting foil. It will start with the plastic substrate, and introduce high-throughput deposition and patterning methods for all of the materials necessary to fabricate the final lighting foil. Ultimately, the project will demonstrate a 30cm x 30cm, high quality lighting foil, manufactured with new optimised, disruptive R2R processes. While the project will focus on polymers, the platforms developed will be fully compatible with SMOLEDs.

Samsung Electronics said on Friday that it will introduce AM OLED handsets with either 2.8-inch or 3.2-inch organic panels supplied by Samsung SDI in the first half of this year.

"We have been discussing the supply of AM OLEDs with overseas phone makers and mobile service providers, while the company is in the second phase of investment to double the annual production capacity of AM OLEDs to 3 million from 1.5 million units" an official from Samsung SDI said.

Art.Lebedev announced that they will begin shipping the Optimus their OLED-keyboard.

Read more here  

Panasonic has announced it will start construction of a new LCD television factory in August this year that will more than double their production capacity.

The factory would also produce OLED TVs, but only after the 2010 opening and once the LCD production lines are fully operational.

According to Reuters, Sony is planning to spend 200M$ (22 billion yen) to develop the production technology to make medium to large OLED panels.

Samsung SDI said on Sunday it is engaged in the second phase of investment to sharpen its AM OLED lines.



"The move is intended to double monthly production capacity to 3 million units this year from the current 1.5 million by cutting costs" a Samsung SDI spokesperson said.

LPL, which recently merged AM OLED lines from LG Electronics, also plans to confirm its investment in AM OLEDs in the first half.



"We are considering building a new plant for AM OLEDs. The announcement will be made no later than June" a spokesperson from LPL said.

As we reported last week, Dialog Semiconductor has announced an interesting new technology called SmartXtend. The technology gives PMOLED displays a boost in terms of video quality and performance - they claim it will be just ilke AMOLED, at a much lower cost.

Now we got some more information from them, attached below. The summary -

"SmartXtend™ reduces peak current by driving more than one row at a time. In particular, each video frame is decomposed into two sub-frames. During the first of these sub-frames the rows are driven two at a time with the same data. That is, a lower peak current is applied over a longer period of time. During the other sub-frame ‘corrective’ data is added to each row to give each pixel its individual color.

Dialog Semiconductor is the first to have found a way to perform the necessary calculations in a cost effective manner suitable for application to low power, mobile devices. Using this driving scheme SmartXtend™ can reduce peak current through each diode by up to 30 percent. For example, a PMOLED panel driven with the conventional scheme requires about 150uA per anode, whereas only 100uA is required to drive the same panel when SmartXtend™ is used."

Dialog also claim they can reduce power consumption - "SmartXtend™ reduces average power consumption using a number of proprietary techniques that reduce the number of pre-charge cycles, the current and the voltage. Using these techniques SmartXtend™ can reduce power of the whole display subsystem by up to 30 percent."

I'm happy to say that we have reached an agreement with NanoMarkets to offer you 10% discount on their "Emerging Markets for OLED and Printed Lighting report. Attached is a white-paper on the report.

If you wish to get the 10% discount, please contact us.

TPO's CEO in an interview to Digitimes - "TPO has been very positive about the AM OLED market. In fact, the company has lit up its first AM OLED panel. However, some technical problems such as mura have not been solved. The company plans to introduce AM OLED panels in 2009"

Read more here (digitimes)

The DOE is giving 21M$ for several companies to research advanced lighting. OLED is one such technologies. Here's a list of OLED projects getting funded:

• Add-Vision : Low-Cost, High Efficiency Polymer OLEDs Based on Stable p-i-n Device Architecture. This project seeks to develop a polymer OLED (P-OLED) lamp technology using advanced material synthesis and a modified device architecture to enable large-scale manufacturing of robust P-OLED lamps.
  Project Value: $ 2,010,076
  Estimated DOE contribution: up to $ 1,567,858
  
• DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland, WA): Charge Balance in Blue Electrophosphorescent Devices. This project seeks to develop new organic phosphine oxide electron transporting/hole blocking materials in combination with ambipolar phosphine oxide host materials for achieving charge balanced blue phosphorescent OLED system, a necessary component of white OLEDs.
  Project Value: $ 1,783,000
  
• Arkema Inc. (King of Prussia, PA): Application of Developed Atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition (APCVD) Transparent Conducting Oxides and Undercoat Technologies for Economical OLED Lighting. This project seeks to develop a commercially viable process for an OLED substrate, which would consist of the actual substrate of soda lime glass, a barrier undercoat, and a transparent conducting oxide.
  Project Value: $ 2,626,632Estimated
  DOE contribution: up to $ 2,101,305
  
• Universal Display Corporation (Ewing, NJ): Development of High Efficacy, Low-Cost Phosphorescent OLED Lighting Luminaire. This project seeks to develop high efficiency OLED lighting luminaires as part of an integrated ceiling illumination system.
  Project Value: $ 2,662,489
  Estimated DOE contribution: up to $ 1,905,467