August 2009

The CombOLED project together with CEA-LETI (a French research laboratory) has developed an efficient transparent white OLED. The Small-Molecule OLED has a 5 x 5 cm2 active emitting area, which is deposited using thermal evaporation and encapsulated using ultra-thin layers.

The OLED is 65% - 70% transparent, and emits light from both sides (bottom and top emission). The white luminance reaches 1000Cd.m² at 4 and 4.6 volts for bottom and top emission, respectively. The white OLED efficacy are respectively 11Lm/W and 3Lm/W at 1000Cd.m² for bottom and top emission, which leads to an overall efficiency of 14Lm/W. In this case the color coordinates are (0.40, 0.42) and (0.35, 0.42). When they create the same color for both sides, the efficiency is 10Lm/W and it's only 65% transparent.

The researchers are still working on greater efficiency and improvement of the permeation properties of the thin encapsulation layers.

UPDATE: Here's a video clip of the CombOLED transparent white OLED panel.

Kodak is showing a new demo of their flexible OLEDs - working under water:

Here's some closeups of the flexible OLED:

Scientists from the RIKEN center in Japan have found a new way to make OLEDs, using electrospray-deposited polymer films, which they say have better characteristics than OLEDs made from spin-coated films. The researchers have used a novel dual-solvent concept to make the electrospray-deposited films smoother than before, thereby enabling the superior devices to be built.

Previous attempts to use the electrospray-deposition technique for OLED fabrication have failed to produce polymer films that compete with other fabrication techniques. Yutaka Yamagata of the RIKEN Center decided to use a combination of two solvents to improve this technique, which uses a thin glass capillary with the polymer solution stored inside and a conductive wire inserted in it. When a high voltage is applied between this conductive wire and the OLED electrodes on the substrate, the solution sprays out of the capillary end as atomized droplets that are attracted to the substrate by electrostatic force. This means there is little solution wastage as the spray is highly directed.

From a series of comparative experiments, the researchers found that devices fabricated from electrospray-deposited films turned on at lower voltages and could support higher current densities than ones made from spin-coated films. At low voltages, the electrospray deposition also enabled higher pixel intensity.

We have discovered a range of conditions using a two-solvent method that can make extremely smooth thin films using electrospray deposition, says Yamagata. Using this technology these devices could be manufactured as inexpensively as printing newspapers.

Verizon has officially announced the Samsung Rogue U960 (leaked earlier this month). The phone has a 3.1" 480x800 AMOLED resistive touchscreen with 262K colors. It also has a QWERTY sliding keyboard, on-screen widgets, 1000 entry phonebook, Bluetooth, HTML browser, 3.5mm
headset jack and 16GB microSDHC support. Talk time is 4.7 hours.

Samsung U960 rogue

It will released on September 8th, for 99$ after a 100$ rebate with a 2 year contract, or 420$ without a contract.

There's a funny story over at EngadgetHD : A man found a working Mobira Talkman- that's a 25 years old cellphone (in the size of a briefcase). He turned it into a fully functional computer (he calls it the Mobira Dataman) - with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1Gb of RAM, a 32GB SSD H/D and a wireless network card. He also fitted it with a small OLED display...

Samsung announced that the Omnia II phone (3.7" touch AMOLED, 800x480) will be coming to Verizon soon.

The Omnia II is a HSDPA/HSUPA phone, with 5mp camera, video recording at 30fps,
internal memory of 2GB to 16GB, microSD slot, WiFi, A-GPS and TouchWiz
UI 2.0.

LG will start selling their 15" OLED TVs in December 2009. Today they have published some pictures of their upcoming TV at flickr. It is rumored that they will officially announce this TV at IFA 2009 (September 4th). Here are a couple of nice shots, the rest can be found here:

LG 15-inch OLED TV

The US Department of Energy is funding new LED and OLED research with a 6.4M$ program. 1M$ of that program goes to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). They will develop new, stable materials for high-efficiency blue OLEDs.

Researchers from China, Singapore and the US has created new inorganic-LED based displays, that are brighter and more versatile than OLEDs, and can also be made flexible and transparent.

The team first created what they call a "sacrificial layer" in the manufacturing process. It's a weak adhesive that holds the LEDs in place while they form, but then it's partially dissolved away by an etching liquid. Next, a rubber stamping device presses down on and grabs hold of a bunch of the crystals. The stamping device picks up the LEDs and deposits them onto flexible sheets of glass, plastic, or rubber, where they are integrated with the conductors and insulators that will allow the lighting array to function. The result is a thin, flexible array that's much brighter than conventional OLED arrays.

Rogers says the material for the inorganic LED arrays, square centimeter by square centimeter, is still more expensive than its organic LED counterparts. But because the inorganic diodes are so much brighter, far fewer are needed to create a display of equivalent brightness--and therefore the cost of the inorganic LED arrays is comparable.