Corning says they developed a new glass for OLED TVs. Corning says that they believe in OLEDs - and the technology "will develop to become important to the display industry in the future and will require new glass compositions to maximize OLED potentials".

Corning estimates that in 2011, the demand for OLED TV glass will be around 10 million square feet. LCD TV Glass will amount to about 3 billion square feet...

LG Display hired Intertek to test its AH-IPS LCD technology against Samsung's Super AMOLED Plus. LG's AH-IPS offers 720x1280 resolution at 4.5" (329ppi) - and Intertek says that it's better than Samsung's OLED - in quality and color accuracy. LG's LCD is also more power efficient (although it's not clear how they tested it - it just says that it's better because it always draws the same energy, while OLEDs consume twice as much on white screens).

Samsung Galaxy S2

DisplaySearch forecasts that Samsung's AMOLED Gen-5.5 fab ramp-up will triple AMOLED capacity by the end of 2012 (from 890,000 m2 in 2011 to 2.6 million m2 in 2012). Capacity will double again in 2013.

Most of the grown in 2012 and 2013 will come from Samsung's AMOLED fab - as other players are still watching Samsung's progress, with LG, AUO, CMI and Irico also expected to built pilot and/or mass production plants in the next two years. LCD makers are current facing a hard time, and "AMOLED displays are a bright spot in the FPD manufacturing industry, offering hope for FPD supply chain companies.".

Sony announced their 0.5" XGA (1024x768) OLED microdisplay - as used in four new cameras. It turns out that Sony is producing this OLED display on their own. The cameras that use this displays are the A77 and A65 DSLRs and the NEX-7 and NEX-5N mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras (the NEX-5N doesn't come with the viewfinder, but you'll be able to buy it for $350).

To create those small pixels, Sony used a new design that uses white OLEDs and color filters. Sony also uses in-built D/A converters and driver electronics to create a small footprint.

Universal Display announced advances in their white OLED lighting panels. The new panels use a Stacked-OLED (SOLED) architecture and exceed the DOE's commercial panel target of 10,000 hours (at an initial luminance of 3,000 cd/m²) by more than 20%. The panels are 15x15cm² in size and feature 90,000 liftimre (D70), 55 lm/W efficiency and a CRI of 86. A stacked-OLED provides better lifetime, but has more layers and is more difficult to manufacture.

The company also showcased an all-phosphorescent, white OLED luminaire designed into an under-cabinet lighting system. This development was funded in part under a DOE Solid State Lighting program back in 2009. The warm-white OLED offer a power efficacy of 70 lm/W when operated at 190 lumens (~1000 cd/m²), and 61 lm/W when at 420 lumens (~2200 cd/m²). The panels operate at a low voltage of ~4 V.

Universal Display and Samsung finally signed a long-term license agreement. Samsung will pay a fixed license fee (the amount was not disclosed, but we'll probably learn more soon) and will also purchase PHOLED materials from UDC - and this includes Green PHOLED as well (as we reported a while back Samsung will start using Green in their new 5.5-Gen fab). The current agreement will last till December 2017.

This is very good news for Universal Display (providing the financial agreement is sound of course) - as it validates the company's patents, which are facing challenges in several countries currently, including Korea.

Update: Sony announced the OLED viewfinder (and four cameras that use it) - and it's made by Sony.

Sony is preparing another new camera with an OLED viewfiner, the NEX-7, according to new rumors. It actually has the same 24.3 mp sensor as in the A77 - and the same XGA OLED viewfinder. The back display is a 3" LCD.

LG announced a new mobile phone, the Optimus Sol - and this is the first phone that uses LG Display's new AMOLED displays (at 3.8"). LG brands these Ultra-AMOLED, and they say that they use new technology that makes them better under sunlight (and also offer better colors and reduced image degradation). We guess that (like Samsung's Super-AMOLED) these display include the touch-sensor in the display panel itself. Or perhaps they include a polarizing filter like Nokia's ClearBlack displays. The phone also includes a new "Dark UI" which conserves power on the AMOLED display - around 20%-30% according to LG.

LG Display are currently making 4,000 monthly substrate in their new 4.5-Gen AMOLED plant (which is about 500,000 3" displays). The company announced they will not invest further in small AMOLED production and will focus on large panels for OLED TVs.

Researchers from UCLA demonstrated an intrinsically stretchable transparent PLED device. The device was fabricated using a simple process that uses single-walled carbon nanotube polymer composite electrodes. The interpenetrating networks of nanotubes and the polymer matrix in the surface layer of the composites lead to low sheet resistance, high transparency, high compliance and low surface roughness.

The new P-OLED prototype can be linearly stretched up to 45% (see photo below) and the composite electrodes can be reversibly stretched by up to 50% with little change in sheet resistance. They say that this is the first stretchable OLED. Back in 2009, researchers from Tokyo demonstrated a stretchable "rubber like" OLED panel which made from many small individual panels (it's not clear whether each small panel was stretchable by itself).

A few weeks ago we posted MBraun movies showing some of their OLED Processing equipment (the UV_03 cleaner, the Vacuum Hotplate and the Convection Oven). Today MBraun released another set of three films. The first film shows their Slot Die Coater - which can be used in fabs from Gen-1 to Gen-4.5:

The second film is about the Edge Bead Remover (EBR):