April 2008

Toray Industries announced that it has succeeded in developing blue light emitting materials, boasting the world’s highest levels of efficiency and pure color emissions, for use in full-color OLED displays.

The combination of Toray’s proprietary molecular design technology and nano-dispersion technology was instrumental in the material achieving superior light emitting performances of luminous efficiency 6 cd/A (candela/ampere) and color purity (CIE(x,y) = (0.14,0.10)) in combination with Toray’s electron-transporting material.

Sichaun CCO began production of China's first OLED production line in a RMB705 million investment (around $100 million). Production will start in the first quarter of 2009, annual capacity will be 12 million PMOLED displays.

He Kesi, director of Changhong's Enterprise Scheming Department, says that Changhong will consume part of the products of the new facility with the rest supplied to other manufacturers. Changhong owns 60% in Sichuan CCO.

A breakthrough barrier technology from Singapore A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) protects sensitive devices like organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) and solar cells from moisture 1000 times more effectively than any other technology available in the market, opening up new opportunities for the up-and-coming plastic electronics sector.

A team of scientists from Singapore’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering (IMRE) has developed a new patented film that has the highest reported water vapour barrier performance to date, as tested by the UK Centre for Process Innovation. The tests have shown that the new film is 1,000 times more impervious to moisture than existing technologies. This means a longer lifetime for plastic electronic devices such as solar cells and flexible displays that use these high-end films but whose sensitive organic materials are easily degraded by water vapour and oxygen. The new technology is a boon to the burgeoning plastic electronics industry that aims to deliver flexible, lightweight and cheap electronics products to consumers in ways that silicon electronics may never reach such as disposable or wraparound displays, cheap identification tags, low cost solar cells and chemical and pressure sensitive sensors.

Read more in the attached PDF document (you have to register to oled-info to view it)

LG Display has deployed into the development of AMOLED panels. Despite that AMOLED is mostly applied in small-size panels, LG Display said it would continue investing in the large-size segment, with volume production of 32-inch OLED TVs scheduled for 2011.

Read more here (digitimes)

Universal Display Corporation today announced the successful development and delivery of a novel OLED display prototype to the U.S. Army. The prototype demonstrates the world’s first flexible OLED display that incorporates both visible green emission for daytime operation and infrared (IR) emission for use in dark environments.

Developed through a two-phase Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program with the U.S. Army, this initial prototype was designed to demonstrate capabilities that would enable soldiers in the field to view one display in two modes. Using Universal Display's high-efficiency PHOLED technology, the OLED display prototype provides green-color emission for daytime operation, and can be switched to operate in an IR-emission mode, that can only be detected through specialized night-vision goggles, for covert operations. By integrating this onto a flexible substrate, the Company has achieved a design suitable for portable, rugged and conformable use both day and night in the field.

Researchers have developed an improved oOLED sealing (encapsulation) process to reduce moisture intrusion and improve device lifetime.

OLEDs have better color and flexibility and the capability of larger displays, but companies still need an inexpensive encapsulation method that can be used to mass produce organic electronics that don’t allow moisture in, said Wusheng Tong, a senior research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

Manufacturers now seal displays in an inert atmosphere or in a vacuum environment. They glue a glass lid on top of the display substrate with a powder inside the display to absorb moisture that diffuses through the glue. These seals are expensive and labor-intensive to assemble.

With funding from GTRI’s independent research and development program, Tong and his GTRI collaborators senior research scientist Hisham Menkara and principal research scientist Brent Wagner have replaced the glass enclosure with a thin-film barrier formed by a less expensive conventional deposition method.

The researchers selected advanced ion assisted deposition, which utilizes reactive ions to deposit a high-density, pinhole-free thin silicon oxynitride (SiON) film on the OLED surface.

Read more here (Newswise)

Samsung SDI says that large-size applications (OLED TVs, monitors, etc.) will adopt AMOLEDs in 2009, and flexible OLEDs will arrive in 2010. Samsung SDI is currently producing 1.5 million panels, and they will double that in 2009, and in 2010 double again to 6 million.  

They also say that the power consumption is a big issue that has to be solved.

Read more here (digitimes)

Techon has posted an interesting discussion with Novaled's CEO.

Highlights:

• Our goal is to improve the luminance efficiency to 100lm/W, which, I believe, can be achieved in 2 years.


• The key feature of OLED lighting equipment is the superior energy efficiency due to the high luminance efficiency


• OLED is the direct evolution of LCD panels, not a revolution against them

"This patent creates a promising new approach to creating 3D images, which to our knowledge is not currently being pursued by any of our competitors. This technology is a truly unique avenue to creating 3D displays and has evolved from our multidisciplinary research strategy at OU," stated 3DIcon President Vivek Bhaman.

Inventor and Co-Principal Investigator at OU, Dr. Gerard Newman added, "Our innovation represents a completely new technology avenue for creating high resolution, low-energy 3D images while bypassing several of the technology challenges facing existing strategies for creating 3D displays."

3DIcon's research team at OU considers this invention to be groundbreaking in that it integrates technological advances across five areas, including: 1) photo elements, 2) light emitting elements, 3) circuits, 4) material synthesis through combination, and 5) light scanners and modulators.

"We believe that the potential applications of this patent create an opening for 3DIcon to enter significant new markets in the rapidly growing display area that includes 2D and 3D," added 3DIcon chairman and CEO, Martin Keating. "With each new patent, we further fortify our IP strategy and advance our commercial goals in the areas of 3D displays. Our research continues to provide new opportunities for the company."

In addition to its use for creating 3D displays, this patent also covers the creation of unique two-dimensional displays that would be wafer-thin, flexible, and most importantly free of connector cables and belts.

According to Dr. Jim Sluss, Principal Investigator for the project at OU, "When applied to 2D displays, we envisage flex screens as thin as a few millimeters that could literally be rolled up and put in your pocket."

Sony is showing new 0.2 mm thick 3.5" AMOLED displays, capable of QVGA resolution (320x220). Sony is also showing a 0.3 mm thick, 11-inch OLED with 960 x 540 resolution.

As a reminder, Sony's XEL-1 OLED TV is 3 mm thin - so these new panels are a tenth of that width. This is a great achievement by Sony, hopefully such thin OLEDs will be commercialized soon...