September 2010

Astron Fiamm has created a new car concept (called Car.Bones) that uses OLED Lighting: headlights, inside-lighting, turn indicators, and more. Alessandro Dolcetta, Astron FIAMM's co-found says that "OLED opens up a new era of by Astron Fiamm products lighting ‘signatures’, and this light-modeling capacity enables us to help our clients and especially car manufacturers to create a endless variety of visual product offers."

Car.bones can be visited from the 2nd October to the 17th October at the Paris Auto show Mondial de l’Auto 2010. More photos of this OLED-Car concept be be seen below:

Mitsubishi has installed the first Diamond Vision OLED screen, over at Merck's new Material Research Center in Darmstadt, Germany. The display measures 3.84m by 2.3m with a 1280x768 resolution. It has 60 modules (each is 128x128), and weights a total of 480Kg(!). Merck will use the display as an information system for presentations and events.

155-inch Diamond-Vision prototype

The Diamond Vision OLED display has started selling in September 21st, and uses PMOLED Modules - each is 128x128 pixels (384mm by 384mm in size). Each pixel is about 3mm in size. We're not sure, but this probably means that Mitsubishi is using Merck's OLED materials (or at least some OLED technology from Merck).

The Holst Centre is looking for researchers - about 20 of them (currently there are around 200 researchers), in fact, and many of those are for OLED related research. The Holst Centre was setup in 2005 by IMEC (Belgium) and TNO (Holland), with government support, and is located in Eindhoven.

You can find more information about the jobs, and application forms over at Holst's site.

The OLED Association has awarded Samsung's Dr. Ho Kyoon Chung with the first 'OLED Leader Award'. Barry Young, managing director, OLED Association, said: Over the last decade, I can think of no one who has done more to solve the technical challenges associated with the commercialization of OLED displays, furthering their introduction and increasing market adoption.

Dr. Chung is chair professor of Sungkyunkwan University and full-time Advisor to Samsung SMD, which is dedicated to the R&D and manufacturing of AMOLED products and mobile LCD modules. Previously, he was an Executive Vice President of Samsung SDI and head of Samsung SDI Corporate R&D Center from 2006 to 2008. Dr. Chung led the R&D for Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED) since 2000 and is a world leader in bringing the AMOLED technology into the commercial market.

DisplayMate has perform extensive testing of LCD, IPS-LCD in Apple's iPhone 4, AMOLED (in Google's Nexus-One phone) and the Super-AMOLED as used in Samsung's Galaxy S phones. The bottom line is that the Super-AMOLED and IPS-LCD are both great displays, but they say that the iPhone's display is the ultimate winner.

The IPS-LCD is brighter, has higher pixel density and consumes less power. The Super-AMOLED is better in sunlight (less glare) and has much better contrast ratio - blacks are really blacks. The colors on the Super-AMOLED are oversaturated, while the colors on the IPS-LCD are undersaturated. Interestingly, a 'plain' LCD as used by the Motorola Droid has the best picture quality and accuracy.

Samsung's NX100 is now shipping for $599 - a few days earlier than expected. The NX100 is an APS-C (micro-four-thirds) DSLR camera (the successor to the NX10) with a 14.6mp sensor, 3" AMOLED display, 720p movie recording and an optional GPS module. The NX100 uses Samsung's new i-Function lens system that uses the focus ring to change other photo parameters as well.

Buy the NX100 now for $599!

Update: We just got word from RiTDisplay saying that they are still producing OLEDs and do not plan to stop. Good news!

ResearchInChina has released a new report (Global and China Small and Medium-sized Display Device Industry Report, 2009-2010). From the display Abstract, we learn that RiTdisplay (makers of PMOLED displays) are currently focusing on touch displays, and might withdraw from OLED production completely.

Universal Display and Armstrong are showing their efficient white OLED lighting ceiling system. Each luminaire is built from four OLED panels, each 15cmX15cm (overall size is 15cmX60cm), mounted in outcoupling enhancement lenses. The demonstration lamp has four luminaries. Each panel offers 58 lumens per Watt (lm/W) which translates into a luminaire efficacy calculated to be 51 lm/W.

This lighting system has been developed with the help of the US Department of Energy (DOE) - which gave a $1.9 million grant in July 2008. Here's a short video that UDC released in July 2009 showing a prototype system:

There are reports that Wintek is looking to start producing AMOLED displays, and plan to seek a strategic partner to lower the costs associated with such a program. Wintek will use the old production line of Windell in the Taichung Industrial Park, Taiwan.

Wintek will join companies such as Samsung, LG, TPO, AUO,Visionix and Shanghai Tianme - all working on new AMOLED production lines. DisplaySearch are predicting at least 20 new AMOLED production lines in just 3 years.

There's an interesting article over at JoongAng about component shortages for smartphones, and they discuss the supplies issues for AMOLED displays. Shim Jae-boo, a general manager at SMD, said that "until the summer of 2009, its sales employees had a hard time because of the lack of interest from the various buyers, leading to an emergency situation within the company".

In the beginning of 2010, things started to change as Samsung Electronics started to use AMOLED in their own phones: "Now our sales representatives are apologizing to our buyers for the lack of products to supply". Samsung expects that the new 5.5-Gen plant will begin mass producing in July 2011. The new plant will increase Samsung's AMOLED capacity ten-fold: from 3 million displays a month to 30 million.