May 2011

Today we launched our first product - The OLED Handbook. This is a comprehensive guide to OLED technology, market and industry - encompassing all that we learned here at OLED-Info over the past 6 years. We are seeing a growing interest in OLEDs - from all over the world, and we believe that this guide can help introduce the subject quickly and throughly.

Reading this book, you'll learn all about:

• OLED technology and materials
• What kind of OLED displays are available today
• What is a Super AMOLED and a Clear Black display
• All about OLED lighting technology
• OLED lighting panels and lamps available today
• The future of OLED displays and lighting
• And lot's more!

Update: We've got some new technical details about TDK's transparent panels.

TDK announced that they began to mass produce transparent PMOLED displays. The first display (code: UEL476) offers 2.4", QVGA (240x320) resolution and 40% transmittance. Other technical details: 150 cd/ m2 and a temperature range of -20 to +85 degrees C. TDK says that this display is not easily viewable from the rear - for enhanced security.

Lenovo S-800 phone

This is not very surprising - as we already know that Lenovo's S-800 uses a transparent PMOLED from TDK. So this is just a confirmation that the company indeed moved into mass production.

Toshiba developed a new portable OLED lamp - and they will make 100 units of this lamp, and donate these to quake-hit areas (50 units were already donated to the evacuation center in Kesennuma City, Miyagi Prefecture). Toshiba has no plans to sell these to consumers. The lamps run from either four AAA alkaline batteries or from the embedded rechargeable battery - and Toshiba bundle the lamp with a solar-panel (it can also be recharged via a USB port).

The lamp measure 146x100x18.5mm (at the thickest part) and weight 180g without the batteries. There are no details about the OLED panel itself, which is made by Toshiba. We only know that lamp brightness is 53 lm (similar to a desk lamp) with 100% brightness, it can be dimmed to 30% or 10%.

The Korean Advanced Institute of Science (KAIST) says they have developed a new flexible display metal wiring technology. The researchers manufactured the metal wiring by inducing photochemical reaction using laser after self-generated 2-3nm silver nanoparticle photocatalytic from metal-atom melted organic matter. They team also developed a laser-guided pattern adhesive transfer - which is used to pattern solid-state materials from a polymer film to the target film (which is vulnerable to heat).

KAIST reports that the technology enabled ultra-fine silver metal wiring (less than 10?) on various material polymer films and the wiring features high conductivity and high reliability. In fact KAIST claims that the new method will enable cheaper manufacturing (about 1% compared to silver nanoparticle ink!) and the manufacturing speed was improved up to 100 times.

Samsung says that they sold over a million Galaxy S II phones in Korea - in just a month (one phone sold every 3 seconds...). This is a new record for Korea (the previous reord was the Galaxy S - which took 70 days to sell a million units). The Galaxy S II actually broke several records, selling 100,000 units in 3 days, 200,000 units in 8 days and 500,000 in two weeks.

In early May Samsung said that they got over three million pre-orders for the S II. The company originally planned to sell 10 million units in 2011, it seems that they will sell more if the success continues...

Samsung Mobile Display announced a new Joint Venture (50:50) with Japan's Ube Kosan to develop and produce polyimide resin - to be used as substrates for flexible displays (and other applications, too). The initial investment is 19.4 billion won ($18 million USD). The new polyimide material will be heat resistant even at high temperatures. The production facilities will be built in Samsung's industrial complex in Tangjeong, Korea.

Samsung have already demonstrated flexible OLED prototypes built on a polyimide substrate, back in November 2010. According to our information, Samsung plans to start producing flexible OLEDs in 2012 or 2013, and this is one of the first steps they announce towards that goal.

Philips are offering a new OLED lighting kit called 2of3 - which offers quite a saving. The kit includes driver electronics and two large OLEDs (you can choose from the rectangle, dot or square, all in tall version) - and it costs just €180. If you choose two rectangles you save €434!

This is not a limited-time offer. Philips say that it is time to give more people access to this new light source. In fact they told us that what they do is apply the 'volume' price to the engineering samples price. Good on them!

Sony is showing a new hybrid-printed OLED device. The red and green OLEDs are printed while the blue OLED is apparently vacuum deposited. The prototype on display is a full color 3", VGA (640x480) resolution (270 ppi).

Dupont has unveiled two new OLED display prototypes made by a coating process (using solution processable materials). The first (shown below) is a 4.3" 480x272 (128 ppi) and the second is a 5.8" display offering 294x196 (83 ppi).

Dupont says that the solution-processable displays offer better uniformity than commercial LCD displays. The cost advantage for solution-processable OLEDs grow as as the panel size increases.

A few weeks ago we reported that Samsung's Cheil Industries will invest 100 billion won (about $92 million) and build an OLED material facility in Kumi, Korea. Now we hear reports that the company indeed announced plans for an OLED material production line, but total investment will be 19.9 billion won (about $18 USD million).

Cheil Industries plans to produce Electron Transport Layer (ETL), Hole Transport Layer (HTL) and Organic Insulator (PDL) materials for AMOLED displays. About $9.7 million will go into the ETL and HTL facilities, and the rest ($8.3 million) will be used to build the PDL production line. Cheil plans to supply materials for Samsung Mobile Display in the second half of 2011.