We're happy to announce a new addition to the Metalgrass site network: Graphene-Info. Graphene is a sheet, one-atom-thick of carbon atom, in a honeycomb crystal lattice. If you use many layers of graphene, stacked one on top of the other, you’ll get Graphite. Graphene has many uses - Spintronics, sensors, ICs (for example a transparent backplane for OLEDs), ultra-capacitors and more.

We hope you'll enjoy the new site...

OSD are now shipping samples of their new 5.5" PMOLED display (256x64 pixel), the OSD5664ASGGF01, announced in May 2009.

OSD 5664ASGGF01

This monochrome OLED supports up to 16 levels of grayscale and features the Solomon Systech driver IC that supports 8-bit 6800/8080 Parallel or 3-/4-wire SPI data interface. Overall panel size is 146.0mm(H) x 45.0mm(V) x1.6mm(D). Viewing area is 135.65mm(H) x 33.89mm(V) mm.

Contact us for more details on this new large PMOLED

The Samsung Pixon12 phone will launch in Aug 1st, in the UK, exclusively at Phones4U. You can pre-order it today. It is only available with a plan (for 40pounds a month).

Samsung Pixon 12

The Pixon 12 has a 3.1" touch AMOLED, 12MP camera, Wi-Fi, GPS, Geo-tagging, HSUPA and instant-share to popular sites such as Flickr or Facebook.

There's an interesting post on DisplayDaily, trying to compute how much more efficient will an OLED TV be, when compared to the newest LCD TVs?

OLED TVs power consumption is supposed to be around 70% less than a 'plain' LCD. But the newest LCDs use a LED power source, and a new technology called Local-Area-Dimming (or LAD) actually allows the TV to use less energy in sections that use less color. This also gives the TV better contrast (black will finally be black).

According to the calculation of DisplayDaily (which is more of a guess, since we don't have large OLED TVs, and we do not have any shipping LCD with LAD yet) - an OLED TV will still take 30% less power than the best LCD. That's still very good!

LG Displays are talking with Nokia to supply them with AMOLED displays. Currently Nokia has two main OLED suppliers - TPO and SMD. Nokia are using OLEDs in their N85 and N86 phones, and are looking to introduce OLEDs into more new phones.

Nokia N86

LG has invested 79M$ in AMOLED production lines, which will begin volume-production in 2H 2010. They have recently doubled their OLED research staff. Currently they have the capacity of 2.4M panels a year, which is not enough for Nokia.

Amazon.com now lists the Samsung i8910 Omnia HD, unlocked, for 700$. The Omnia HD has a 3.7" touch AMOLED, 360x640, 16:9 aspect ratio.

Samsung i8910 HD

The i8910 runs Symbian S60 OS, it's capable of HD video capture at 24fps, and has a 8mp camera, DNLA connectivity, Wi-Fi and GPS. It is still not launched with any network in the US.

Update - the OCZ Sabre is now selling for $112...

Remember the UnitedKeys OLED keyboard? OCZ is now selling the same keyboard, under their own brand, called OCZ Sabre. While the UnitedKeys costs 260$, the OCZ Sabre costs only $135.

DisplayDearch has released their Quarterly Worldwide FPD Forecast Report. They forecast that OLED TV revenues will increase at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 140% from 2008 to 2016 - from 2M$ in 2008 to 2.4B$ in 2016. Demand for electronic books will lift revenue of electrophoretic and similar display technologies at a 49% CAGR (from 246M$ in 2008 to 1.7B$ in 2016).

Total FPD sales will rise only 1% per year, according to DisplaySearch.

Researchers (led by Johnson Chuang from the Simon Fraser University in Canada) have shown that if you choose the color set on an OLED display, you can save up to 40% of the power required.

Different colors in OLED require different power - for example yellow is more efficient than Magenta, at the same brightness. 

This can be useful, if you want to get better battery life over display quality. Here's an example of a tooth image:

The left image (tooth) is using standard colors, and the right image is using colors that require 40% less energy on an OLED. The quality is obviously better with standard colors, but almost all the details are preserved. This can be used for applications such as medical or military I guess, where power saving is key.

A few weeks ago, Philips sent me a couple of Lumiblade OLED panels to test - a blue square, and a white 'freeform'. Unfortunately the white one had some defects. So they sent me a new white panel, this one a square. It's the same size as the blue square. Finally I have a real OLED light lamp - a white one... The OLED driver that I have can only connect to one panel (when you actually buy these from Philips, you get a 4-panel driver. So I couldn't take a photo of two panels together.