July 2009

Corning and the Soitec group have agreed to work on the development of high-performance silicon-on-glass (SiOG) substrates for OLED displays for mobiles.

Corning's silicon-on-glass technology, currently in development, is a thin, single-crystal silicon film applied to Corning display glass. This development is expected to produce an engineered substrate with outstanding electrical mobility and material uniformity, upon which electronic circuits can be easily applied by display manufacturers.

Soitec's proprietary Smart Cut™ technology is used to transfer ultra-thin single crystal layers of wafer substrate material (such as silicon) onto another surface. This technique is used to fabricate more than 90 percent of SOI production wafers in the semiconductor industry.

The UK's printable electronics technology centre (or PETEC) has received a 20M GBP (about 32M$) investment from the UK's government and a regional fund (One North East). PETEC will double its facilities, hoping to begin a 15 billion GBP UK industry.

TOPLESS project OLED lamp prototype

PETEC is working on several projects, including OLED displays and lighting and solar panels. One of these project is TOPLESS, working on OLED lighting. PolyPhotonix, who are working on OLED light therapy, are opening a production line at PETEC.

IDTechEx has released a new report, titled "Barrier Films for Flexible Electronics", which is aimed for those developing flexible electronics, seeking materials needs and opportunities. The report focuses on flexible OLED displays and organic photovoltaics.

OLED-Info readers get a special, limited time 10% discount (until August 15th). Just use this on-line coupon: OLEDINFO10.

It seems like the rumors about Apple and OLEDs will never die. It seems very likely that Apple will soon launch a new tablet computer, which will also double as a book-reader (which will compete with Amazon's new Kindle DX).

Smarthouse reports that the new tablet will have a 10.6" display, made by LG Display. It will either be an OLED, or a LED-based LCD. Smathouse seems to be running these rumors for a long time now, claiming Apple will have an OLED iPod, or monitor, or netbook... 

There will be an interesting battle here between Amazon and the E Ink based Kindles, vs Apple with their color LCDs or OLED. E Ink displays are much more power efficient, are readable in the sun, and are easy on the eye. But they are slow (cannot display video for example) and of course do not have color. So will people want a dedicated reading device, or will they prefer a general computer that can also be used for reading?

Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) has developed new, efficient, coated phosphorescent-polymer-based OLEDs. The new devices achieved about 40% in light output (the quantity of light emitted from light source, divided by electric power consumed.) - which they claim is the highest level in the world. The efficiency is 30 lm/W, and the lifetime is approximately 10,000 hours.

SDK says that OLED made by coating is attracting keen attention because it consists of a few layers formed by coating polymer without the use of vacuum, providing the opportunity for substantial cost reductions and for the production of large
area-emission panels in the future.

Konica Minolta is launching an online OLED lighting ad campaign (ads were spotted in CNN video, for example). Konica Minolta is working on Phosphorescent OLED lighting, together with UDC and GE. They have plans to release their first products by 2011. It seems like OLED lighting is heating up (unlike the OLED panels), especially since Philips has started shipping samples, and I guess KM also wants to make an early impact, and hopefully we'll hear more from them soon. Perhaps they also plan an "early launch" of samples, like Philips.

KM says that OLED lighting will "change our world", it's the biggest invention in lighting since Edison, and focus on the environmental bonuses and design possibilities. KM also seems to working on flexible or curved OLEDs, or at least they list these as some of OLED's advantages.

Curvlinear OLED lighting vessel concept

They also sponsor several artists, envisioning the future of OLED lighting. Currently there's just one concept from Seifert Stoeckmann, with their "curvilinear light vessel" concept, seen above (more photos and explanation available at KM's site). Their idea is to enable gently curving objects - which might be small "palm" sized objects to giant UFO-like outdoor pieces (shown above).

Solterra Renewable Technologies (wholly owned subsidiary of Hague Corp) today announced an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with the University of Arizona for the patented, intellectual property covering screen-printing techniques for OLED fabrication. Solterra's CEO Stephen Squires says that there are essential similarities between the screen-printing techniques to fabricate LEDs and the screen printing technology that Solterra is currently optimizing to print quantum dots to make thin-film solar cells.

Advantech has got a 15M$ investment to build a pilot line for their roll-to-roll OLED fabrication technology. Advantech will use the line to produce OLED TV backplanes, and Electronic Shelf Labels backplanes. They say their new technology will enable fabrication at "exceptionally low cost". Advantech already produced 4" monochrome AMOLED panels (shown below).

Advantech was founded by Dr. T. Peter Brody, inventor of the Active-Matrix, and they hope to revolutionize the OLED market. The current investment round comes from the Pan family (12M$) and from Shanghai Ventures (2.1M$). The Pan family has already invested 12M$ in previous rounds. 

Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) has made a new PMOLED panel using gravure printing technology. DNP used P-OLED inks, on a glass substrate. The drive voltage of the OLED panels is 12V, with a luminance as high as 100cd/m².

DNP gravure-printed PMOLED

DNP made two prototypes (shown above) - 192x32mm (32x192 resolution) and 110x37mm (32x96 resolution). Both are 1.4mm thick.

There are rumors that HP has an upcoming smartphone, called the iPAQ K3 Obsidian. Reportedly it will have a 2.46" Touch-AMOLED display, with QVGA 320x240 resolution.

HP iPAD K3 Obsidian

Other specs include a 3.2Mp camera, 528Mhz CPU, 256Mb RAM, microSD slot, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, microUSB and GPS.