Novaled announced their financial results for 2010. Total revenue increased by 37% to €11.2 million (this was revealed by their CFO last month). OLED license and material sales amounted to €6.12 million. They say that the increase in revenue is mainly due to one customer (which we know to be Samsung). The company had positive EBIDATA for the year, but the cash flow was negative (-€837,000).

Novaled says the 2011 is expected to be another strong year due to new increased OLED production including mass production by new players.

Universal Display unveiled a new single-layer hybrid organic-inorganic encapsulation technology for OLED (or other thin film devices). The new technology can be used on rigid and flexible substrates and may accelerate commercialization of plastic substrates based displays.

The new technology uses environmentally-benign and non-toxic materials in a potentially low-cost process. UDC collaborated with the Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University to demonstrate the technology effectiveness, and the implementation was supported by the US DoD, DoE and the National Science Foundation.

Universal Display and Samsung announced another extension (till June 30, 2011) to their license agreement (that was announced back in 2005). Samsung will continue to use UDC's PHOLED materials (red, and soon green) in their AMOLED products.

This is the fourth three months extension between SMD and UDC - the companies still can't seem to negotiate a new agreement.

ORSAM unveiled a new OLED and LED lamp, called the Airabesc. Here's how they describe the design: "As if modeled by the wind ('Air'), the elements of the reduced, symmetrical aluminum form seem to be floating in the air. Despite the structure’s flowing lightness and harmony which are inspired by the arabesque, a ballet position, the biomorphic shape casts its spell on the observer".

The Airabesc is hand-made from premium materials in Germany and provides warm atmospheric light. The lamp length is 81cm, the width is 30cm and the height is 10cm. It contains 11 ORBEOS (RMW-046) rectangle panels and 6 LEDs (OSLON LCW CQ7P.CC). The power consumption is about 16W. The lamp comes in black, white or polished aluminum.

According to reports, Samsung decided to adjust/delay their AMOLED production in their upcoming 5.5-Gen fab. The first line is almost complete and will start producing panels during the second quarter, as planned, but further expansion will be deferred to the first half of 2012 (instead of the end of 2011). This does not represent a big change in Samsung's AMOLED plans, and total investment is not changed.

The first line will be able to produce 24,000 monthly substrates in Q2 2011. This will grow to 48,000 by the end of 2011. But Samsung's original plans were to produce around 100,000 substrates per month by that time, and now the company decided to defer that further expansion to the first half of 2012.

Researchers from the University of Toronto discovered that using chlorine can drastically reduce OLED device complexity and improve its efficiency. In fact in their tests, the efficiency more than doubled at very high brightness. The idea is to add a one-atom thick sheet of chlorine on the ITO electrode used in OLEDs. This can make the electrode a more efficient electrical transport - and so there's no need for a 'transport' layer as used in current designs.

The researchers developed a UV light assisted process to achieve chlorination (which negates the need for chlorine gas) - and so the whole process is easy to engineer, safe and reliable. The new OLED which used the CI-ITO electrode achieved a record efficiency of 50% at 10,000 cd/m².

Henkel announced it will join the Holst Centre, and the two companies will partner on flexible electronics. Henkel is into adhesives and sealants - and these kind of technologies are important for flexible OLED lighting panels and displays.

This joint research will allow Henkel to further evaluate and develop its optically clear, electrically conductive and moisture barrier technologies on actual devices.

TCZ (a division of Cymer) announced a volume order for its TCZ-1500B, a new Gen-5.5 laser crystallization system, that can be used for LTPS LCD or OLED production. This order was received from a 'leading Asian flat panel manufacturer' - and is TCZ's fourth tool customer. The TCZ-1500B uses TCZ's patented laser crystallization technology (announced in May 2010).

Researchers from the University of Florida developed a new OTFT for AMOLED displays. The new OTFT has a novel stacked vertical structure that automatically gives a large gate area. A thin gate can be achieved by spin-coating or other techniques. They say that 200µm resolution is sufficient to lay out the drain electrode which is the most demanding feature, compared with 25µm needed for some lateral TFTs.

The team prepares a paper that is due very soon to explain the new OTFT. There are still challenges of course to overcome in this design.

Update: according to some articles, Kaneka is using 2,500 OLED panels in their installation - which makes this the largest OLED lighting installation to date...

It seems that OLED lighting is the thing to see in the Milano art show. After we've seen some nice installations from Lumiotec, Panasonic and Verbatim, here comes Kaneka, with a massive ceiling installation:

Kaneka's dimmable OLED lighting panels come in five different colors (warm white, red, orange, blue and green). The company is already accepting orders in Japan, although it's not clear when they plan to start shipping samples.