We have published a short article introducing the technology behind OLEDs.

It's not a very technical article, but we discuss OLED displays and lighting, driving methods (AMOLED / PMOLED), OLED materials, lifetime issues, and a bit more.

Hopefully it can prove a good primer for OLED tech - in fact feel free to post it in your blog or site. Click here to read it.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory, on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced its selection for solid-state lighting funding opportunities. A total of fourteen projects were chosen, six of which are OLED related.

QD Vision: Quantum Dot Light Enhancement Substrate for OLED Solid-State Lighting
Summary: This project seeks to develop and demonstrate a cost-competitive solution for realizing increased extraction efficiency organic light emitting devices (OLEDs) with efficient and stable color rendering index (CRI) for SSL. Solution processible quantum dot (QD) films will be utilized to generate tunable white emission from blue emitting phosphorescent OLED (Ph-OLED) devices.

LG Displays says that they will launch OLED products in two months. This might be the 15" OLED monitors/laptop-displays. 

LG also plans to release OLED TVs by the end of 2009. Interestingly they say that an OLED TV will cost 2.1 times the cost of an LCD TV (while LED-based LCDs costs 1.6 the times of normal LCDs). Maybe LG has already decided on the price of those new televisions?

LG 15 OLED at CES 2009

There were rumors before of 32" OLEDs by 2010. So are they planning to release these TVs sooner? Will LG release the first large-size commercial OLED TV?

Marshall electronics announces the world's first OLED camera top / field monitor,  the V-OL761. There are actually 3 models, depending on connection type - HDA, HDMI or 3GSDI (which supports 3Gb/s).

Marshall OLED V-OL761 camera top

The OLED is 7.6", which means it's the same one used in Kodak's wireless OLED frame - and made by CMEL -  16:9 aspect ratio, 800x480 resolution, white to black contrast ratio of 30,000:1.

There are rumors (from Industry insiders...) that Sony will be unveiling their 2nd generation OLED TVs at IFA 2009 - on the 4th of September.

Sony 27 OLED prototype (2008)

The XEL-2 (that's what we'll call it until Sony gives us an official name) might be a 27" model, as promised by Sony a year ago, or it might be the 21" displays shown just last week. We'll have to wait and see!

Samsung Mobile Displays says the growing smartphones sales and touchscreens can boost the sales of OLEDs. They say that in a slowing market, makers will want premium displays for high-end devices.

They also predict that within 5 years, OLEDs could be used on 50% of all mobile phones, 20% of digital cameras and 30% of portable game players. 

As there are over a billion phones sold in a year (and it'll probably be more in 5 years...) then this means Samsung are predicting over 500M OLED displays, just from cell phones!

Samsung already said they will have AMOLEDs in 50% of their new touchscreen phones this year, and they seem to be using OLEDs more and more in mobile devices.

NeoView Kolon is showing a nice new transparent OLED prototype, apparently to be used in cars back mirrors:

Neoview Kolon transparent OLED prototype

We don't have a lot of info on this T-OLED yet...

Korea's state-run ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) says they developed a transparent, oxide transistor and using this, a very stable light modulator that enhanced the aperture ratio of a AMOLEDs.

Samsung Transparent AMOLED

ETRI said it developed the new oxide transistor by using atomic layer deposition process that greatly enhances operational stability and showed excellent electronic and optical qualities. This will mean faster production of such displays.

DigInfo news has released a short clip of Sony's 21" OLED prototype unveiled yesterday:

Will this be Sony's XEL-2 TV? We don't know yet (it was supposed to be a 27" panel).

eMagin is showing their microdisplays at this year's SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing conference. eMagin is showing two kinds of OLED microdisplays:

• SXGA OLED-XL™ microdisplay (1280 x 1024 triad pixels) offers digital signal processing in a compact package (0.77-inch diagonal active area) requiring less than 200 mW of total power under typical operating conditions of 100 cd/m2 in full-color.
• SVGA+ Rev3 display offers the most power efficient OLED solution for near-eye personal viewer applications such as thermal imaging, using less than 115 mW power in monochrome and lower than 175 mW at 100 cd/m2 for full color video. The SVGA+ Rev3 microdisplay allows for a simpler calibration over temperature and is ideal for demanding binocular luminance and color matching.

More than a dozen new systems on show are using eMagin's OLED displays, from companies such as Intevac, Elbit systems, Liteye, Oasis and Thales.

Read the full PR here