August 2011

In 2010 Philips showed a beautiful OLED installation called The OLED Wall, made from lot's of small lumiblade OLED panels, which featured a mirror-like visualization using a camera. Today Philips unveiled the 2nd generation wall, called Lumiblade Living Shapes - which also offers a mirror-like feature, and can also display text information.

The new Living Shapes is made from modular OLED units - each has 16 OLED panels (4x4), and each OLED panel is a 5x5.5 cm in size. The company is showing one version (shown above) that features 72 modules (1,152 OLED tiles in total) - they say it's the world's largest OLED lighting product (but it's not the largest OLED product - Mitsubishi's 6-meter OLED GeoGlobe has 10,362 PMOLED displays!).

Panasonic Electric Works (PEW) released some very interesting news today regarding their OLED Lighting project. First of all, they announced that Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting (PIOL), their joint-venture with Idemitsu Kosan will start shipping OLED lighting panels tomorrow (September 1st) - to local and international markets. Those rather small (80x80mm), thin (2mm) and light (38g) OLED panels will feature no less than Ra90 color rendering (they say it's the world's highest) and 3,000 cd/m² - the world's brightest panels. The efficiency is 30 lm/W and lifetime (D70) is 10,000. The temperature is 3,000K (like a regular light bulb).

PEW itself will start offering OLED lighting modules in December 2011 - which will include the OLED panel, a frame and a built-in control circuit. PEW says that these modules will be "easy-to-embed" and will have a narrow frame design (11mm maximum width). You will also be able to replace the OLED panel in the modules in a simple way.

Taiwan's government wants to establish an AMOLED R&D alliance, to help local companies compete with AMOLED leader Samsung. Currently it is reported that AU Optronics (AUO) has volunteered for the plan and are in talks with smartphone and PC makers HTC, Acer and Asustek to form the alliance. It's not clear whether other Taiwanese OLED makers (such as Chimei Innolux) will join too.

AUO 14-inch OLED prototype

The Taiwanese goverment will offer financial incentives as they hope this alliance will improve AMOLED yield rate and so help local companies secure customers for the AMOLED panels. AUO is facing technical issues which forced them to delay OLED production. CMI is facing both technical and financial problems and their OLED plans aren't clear.

Just after announcing their new OLED production line inauguration, OSRAM released a nice video introducing their OLED technology - and the Airabesc OLED lamp:

The Airabesc is hand-made from premium materials 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. It was supposed to start shipping in July, we're not sure if OSRAM are indeed shipping it now.

OSRAM announced that they have launched their new OLED lighting pilot production line in Regensburg, Germany. The company says that they invested about 20 million euros on this project so far (originally they estimated that the total investment in the research and production center at Regensburg will reach 50 million euros).

OSRAM Orbeos OLED panel

OSRAM says that the new pilot production line will enable them to double the brightness of the OLEDs and to enhance the durability (they probably mean Lifetime) and efficiency. It will also enable them to produce transparent OLEDs, although they haven't announced any such product yet. OSRAM further says that when the expansion of the production center is complete, manufacturing costs are expected to decline by 90%!

Samsung's popular Galaxy S II smartphone is finally coming to the US - to AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. Sprint's version (called the Epic 4G) and T-Mobile's version use a 4.52" display, and AT&T's version will use the regular 4.3" panel. Sprint will be the first to launch it - on September 16th for $200.

The Galaxy S II has a 1.2Ghz processor, Android Gingerbread, 16GB of internal storage and WiMax (Sprint) or HSPA (T-Mobile and AT&T). The display is a 4.3" (or 4.52") Super AMOLED Plus.

Back in CES 2011 Sony showed a prototype Head Mounted Display (HMD) featuring two 1280x720 OLED microdisplays. It was just a prototype back then, and now Sony announed that they will release the HMD (called HMZ-T1) in November (in Japan at first) for ¥60,000 (about $780). Sony uses Dual Panel 3D technology which utilizes separate panels for the left and right eyes, each with its own dedicated 3D video.

These Sony-made OLED microdisplays are 0.7" in size each and use the same technology as Sony's recently announced 0.5" microdisplays.

Harvard researchers developed a new computer program that can predict new material designs. Scientists from Stanford used the software to create a new organic semiconductor which conducts charge faster then silicon - and so can be used make transistors used in OLED displays. While this is just a demonstration of the new software, it shows great promise for new material designs.

According to the researchers, transistors made from the new material operate 10 times faster then amorphous silicon transistors - this is the second-fastest organic semiconductor ever made. The researchers say that this material could be used in industrial applications, but the experiment has more significance as a proof of principle for their methods for using computers to develop new organic materials.

Update: Panasonic announced that they will start shipping OLED panels on September 1st, 2011.

Universal Display signed a technology license agreement with Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting (PIOL). PIOL will use UDC's OLED materials and technologies in its lighting products, and will pay running royalties on its sales (some of it prepaid) and may also purchase OLED materials. The agreement runs through July 2014.

PEW OLED Lighting panels

Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting was established by Panasonic Electric Works (PEW) and Idemitsu Kosan in March 2011, with the aim of developing, manufacturing and marketing OLED lighting panels. The company combines PEW's design and manufacturing technologies with Idemitsu OLED materials. PEW was already using UDC's materials, and it's interesting to hear that the joint-venture will now use UDC materials as well and not just Idemitsu' materials. This validates the claim that efficient OLED lighting (above 40 lm/W or so) requires phosphorescent materials.

LG Display announced that it will cut 2012 investment by at least 25% compared to 2011, as they see a depressed demand for computers and TVs. Total investment in 2012 will be around $2.8 billion (3 trillion Won) - and LG Display will not build any new factories.

LG OLED TV prototype

It's not clear whether the company will keep to its plans to build a 55" OLED TV pilot plant in 2012 and a $2.8 billion mass production plant in 2014.