May 2010

Sony has developed a Top-Emission 11.7-inch 960 x 540 OLED panel using oxide semiconductor TFTs as its driver elements. Sony says that the new panel has a lifetime of over 10 years and better colors than the XEL-1. The OLED panel features a peak brightness of 600cd/m² or more, a contrast ratio of 1,000,000: 1 or more, and 100% or higher color gamut vs NTSC.

The panel improvements were achieved by reducing the property degradation of the oxide semiconductor TFT. Sony made the following three improvements. First, the company prevents the oxidation of the electrode by changing the structure of the source/drain electrode from the commonly-used Ti/Al/Ti three-layer structure to Ti/Al/Mo structure (Mo is in contact with the amorphous IGZO).

Sony is showing a beautiful 4.1" flexible-rollable OLED display at SID - with 423x240 resolution (121ppi), 16.8 million colors and a 1000:1 contrast ratio. It's only 80um thick. Today they revealed some more technical details.

Sony said that the most distinctive technological feature of the panel is the organic semiconductor material "PXX (peri-Xanthenoxanthene) derivative," which Sony developed. The OTFT has a carrier mobility of 0.4cm²/Vs (four times higher than that of pentacene, which is commonly used). As a result, it became possible to use organic TFTs to form a gate-driver circuit on a resin substrate. Because there is no need to embed a driver chip, the entire panel can be folded. Sony did however embed a driver chip (it isn't easy to form a source driver circuit on a resin substrate) - and so the OLED on display can be folded only to one side.

NHK has improved the resolution of their organic TFT (OTFT) flexible OLED panel by four times. The flexible OLED is a 5" 320x240 (QVGA), 80ppi panel. In its 318um-wide pixel (their previous panel's pixel size was 600um) the red, green and blue subpixels are transversely arranged. Its frame frequency is 60Hz.

NHK flexible OTFT OLED panel photo

The gate insulating film was formed by a coating method, which is suited for a large-area panel. The OLED layer was formed by an evaporation method using a low-molecular phosphorescent material.

Universal Display has more news for us at SID 2010. They have already announced the new light-blue light-blue phosphorescent OLED emitter system, suitable for both display and lighting applications. Today they are presenting an all-phosphorescent white OLED to address initial commercial niche white lighting applications

UDC is showing a 15cm x 15cm OLED lighting panel using the company’s highly-efficient phosphorescent OLED technology and materials. UDC believes that this panel is the most energy-efficient performance, at this scale, reported to date. This panel emits a warm-white light with a color rendering index (CRI) of 87 and a correlated color temperature (CCT) of 3055K. It also has a luminous efficacy of 50 lumens per Watt using an optical outcoupling treatment with a modest 1.5x enhancement factor. With an operating lifetime of approximately 10,000 hours to 70% of an initial luminance of 1,000 cd/m², this panel performance has the potential to meet the requirements for a number of initial commercial niche OLED lighting applications, and is an important step toward white OLED panel performance that achieves Energy Star
targets.

Back in CES 2010, Samsung has shown a transparent-laptop prototype, with a 14" display. Today they are revealing the structure of that display. The screen has a 960x540 resolution, and a brightness of 200cd/m².

The top-emission OLED panel uses a LTPS TFT for its drive element. About 75% percent of each pixel is transparent, says Samsung, and this can be achieved by forming drive elements and organic EL elements (anode electrode, luminescent layer) on gate or source wiring. The OLED elements are made by using a metal stencil mask, and the cathode electrodes are made from a newly developed metal material.

The Printable Electronics Technology Centre (PETEC) has announced plans for a new prototyping line to support the lighting and Organic Photovoltaic sectors. The new line is targeted at industries needing large area coating capability alongside the need for reproducible uniform and low defectivity thin film coating onto glass and plastic substrates.

It is designed to be an automated batch tool based on cassette handling of samples to minimise manual intervention. The specification has been aligned with the needs of the SSL and PV industry. It will produce up to 20 samples per day with a panel size from 100mm to 200mm square. The line will have slot-die and spin coating modules, metal and organic evaporation and encapsulation.  It will enable the deposition of solution and small molecule OLED material technologies. It will target fine coating active layers of 10-200nm thinness with uniformity of +-5% across the full panel width.

Last week we reported that PolyPhotonix plans to launch a 8" 60lm/W OLED Lighting panel. They will be using this line at PETEC.

The HTC Incredible is an Android (v2.1) phone with similar hardware to the Google's Nexus One. It has a large 3.7" 480x800 WVGA touch AMOLED display, made by Samsung. It costs $99 with a new service plan for Verizon, but it's actually unavailable now. Verizon says that component shortages are to blame - specifically the AMOLED display (made by Samsung).

HTC Incredible

Samsung announced that they can't meet customer demand in their OLED plant - and they won't be able to do so until next year at least. Recently they commited
$2.2 billion for new AMOLED production lines, to go online in 2012.

A few days ago, Blackbody announced a new OLED lamp (the light photon) It was the first time I heard of Blackbody. Today Blackbody has unveiled a large OLED chandelier that uses 282 OLED panels. Their CTO, Bruno Dussert-Vidalet, was happy to answer a few questions:

Q: Can you give me some background-info on Blackbody? Is it part of Astron-FIAMM? Do you have other investors?

Blackbody is the commercial brand of Astron FIAMM for the general lighting industry.

Light Photon OLED lamp

Q: Do you have any OLED Business partners?

No we are doing all the OLED alone, we use commercial and R&D available materials.

Blackbody is introducing a new OLED chandelier today, called "The Big Bang". It was designed by Bertrand Medas. The original concept was simple: We want a huge chandelier people will remember. The new technology and its real potential must be obvious for everybody, experts and casual visitors alike.

Th Big Bang has a diameter of 3.6m at a height of 1.6m. It incorporates 282 OLEDs in 8 white color grades between 3000K and 6000K. The overall active OLED area is 25.380cm².

A couple of days ago, Universal Display has announced a new light-blue phosphorescent OLED emitter system, suitable for both display and lighting applications. Today they are presenting the all-phosphorescent AMOLED architecture that uses the light-blue OLED as a fourth light-blue sub-pixel.

The introduction of a light blue sub-pixel can significantly extend the operational lifetime of an OLED display and reduce the display's power consumption by as much as 33%, as compared to an RGB OLED display using a fluorescent blue sub-pixel.