Tim Cook (Apple's COO and acting CEO) has visited South Korea last week, and there are reports that he discussed using Samsung's AMOLED displays for the iPad 3. According to the reports, the iPad 3 will launch towards the end of 2011 (by then Samsung's Gen-5.5 plant will have a 48,000 monthly substrate capacity), and Apple offered an advance payment for the displays.

Samsung 7-inch Super AMOLED prototype

These are just rumors currently (A SMD spokesperson said "he had not heard of such discussions with Apple"). But this is the first time that it's at least plausible for Apple to use OLEDs as up until today Samsung's capacity was simply not enough. Back in October 2010 it was rumored that Samsung sold all of their 2011 AMOLED capacity to Apple.

Remember NKK's Rocker OLED Switch? It's a unique snap-in switch with a programmable monochrome white PMOLED display (96x64) that is IP64 water resistance rated. User selection is based on menus visible on the display and multiple layers of menus can be achieved. The company now offers a development kit for $265 (or a kit with two switches for $315).

Universal Display (UDC) were speaking in the SID 2011 investor forum. They have recently raised $250 million, and when asked about their plans for this cash, the speaker said that they will be looking at IP acquisition - especially at doing more material layers.

This has been speculated before, but it's very interesting to hear it directly from UDC. Two possible targets for acquisition are Novaled (which indeed develops and sells non-emissive layer OLED materials) and Plextronics. It is also possible that UDC will purchase patents or technology and not an entire company (as they did in March 2011, buying 74 patents from Motorola).

Universal Display has quietly released a new PHOLED material performance chart. Their Green-Yellow material now has 1.4 million lifetime hours (LT50), and their Red color offers 900,000 hours. Blue is still very challenging, and their light blue offers only 20,000 hours (LT50). Here's the complete chart:

The company also released some PHOLED material efficiency. Using only red PHOLED (with green and blue fluorescent materials) will result in a display that is about 15% more efficient compared to an LCD (this is the combination Samsung used in their 4.5-Gen AMOLED fab). Adding green color will result in a a display that is 30% more efficient compared to an LCD (this is the combination Samsung is using in their new 5.5-Gen fab). Adding blue will give a 50% more efficient display. UDC says that further enhancements (not specified) can result in a display that is 67% more efficient than an LCD. All these results are based on a 4" display operating at 300 cd/m² showing a video that has 40% pixels on.

SID 2011 is now over - and everyone is asking - where were the OLEDs? While we've seen some new prototypes from several companies and a lot of technical papers, it was very strange that both LG and Samsung did not have any OLED displays on show. Obviously the technology is advancing quickly and both companies are pouring a lot of money into OLED production... so where were the panels?

Some speculate that because both Samsung and LG are expanding OLED production they do not want to give any details at this stage. They say it is normal for companies to keep quiet before making commercial announcements. What do you think?

Corning developed a new ultra-slim flexible glass that can be used as a barrier film for flexible OLED displays. Corning claims that this new glass has the same barrier performance (for oxygen and moisture) as normal rigid glass. The whole thing is just 100 microns thick (0.1mm) and can withstand heat up to 400 degrees.

Corning is still developing the manufacturing process of this material, we do not know when it will be commercialized. A while back Corning published a nice video (a day made of glass) showing what's possible with flexible glass.

Japan's NHK is progressing towards flexible OLEDs, and is showing a new prototype. The display on show is 5" in size and offers 320x240 resolution. This is a color OLED, although the green pixels are stronger than other colors and so everything looks green.

NHK has been showing flexible OLEDs since 2008. Here's their 2009 prototype, and here's a 2010 model (which improved the resolution over the 2009 one). NHK says they've been able to improve the manufacturing process, and so the new display has less defects (dead pixels).

Nanomarkets released a new report (OLED Lighting Markets Europe-2011) in which they analyze the European OLED lighting market. They forecast that the total OLED lighting market will reach $1.5 billion in sales by 2016.

German OLED lighting panel sales will reach almost $360 million in OLED panel sales by 2016 - Germany will account for one fourth of all OLED lighting sales (between 2011-2018). In addition, the OLED lighting manufacturing in Europe is concentrated in Germany which is home to major facilities operated by BASF, Fraunhofer IPMS, Philips, Heraeus, Osram, Ledon, Merck and Novaled.

Sony developed a new OLED panel that uses a self-aligned top-gate Oxide-TFT (IGZO). According to Sony, the image is improved over normal OLEDs as it reduces the unevenness in brightness (that is caused by parasitic capacitance between gate electrode and source/drain electrodes in the TFT). The new panel is 9.9" in size (960x540) and features 200cd/m² brightness, 1M:1 contrast ratio and 96% NTSC color gamut.

Sony's new TFT uses a self-aligned top-gate structure (Sony's older TFT used a bottom-gate structure). This makes it possible to keep a long enough distance between the gate electrode and the source/drain electrode - which reduces parasitic capacitance.

Hanvon unveiled new touch technology called ERT (Electromagnetic Resonance Touch). ERT can sense both pen input and finger touch - and is placed beneath the display panel and not above it like normal touch layers. It works by adding several capacitors to a normal digitizer touch sensor.

Hanvon plans to commercialize this technology in its E Ink e-readers (for the Chinese market) by 2H 2011, but it says it is also applicable to OLEDs and LCD display.