October 2011

Update: we have some more information about this upcoming plant, read more here

Sumitomo Chemical have began construction of a PLED material factory in Osaka, Japan. The company says that this plant will start mass-production of high-performance P-OLED materials in 2012. Total investment will be a several billion yen (a billion yen is about $12 million).

Sumitomo 6.5-inch AMOLED prototype

According to the report, these materials will be used for OLED TV production. Interestingly, back in 2009 Sumitomo said that 2012 will be the year when OLED TV finally takes off...

Researchers from the University of Toronto developed the world's most efficient OLED on plastic, which they say is comparable with the best glass-based OLEDs. They discovered that coating the plastic substrate with a 50-100 nano-meter thick layer of tantalum(V) oxide (Ta2O5), an advanced optical thin-film coating material enabled them to re-construct the high-refractive index property previously limited to heavy metal-doped glass:

The researchers say that to create a high-efficiency OLED you need a high-refractive-index (n 10,000 cd/m².

Engadget posted a review of Samsung's Galaxy Note, and they say that "the 5.3" HD Super AMOLED display is as gorgeous as it is enormous...1280 x 800 pixels in a smartphone display is quite a feat, and it's just as impressive to behold as it sounds. The Note's 5.3-inch Super AMOLED screen is incredibly bright, vibrant and detailed, thanks to its 285ppi resolution... colors on the Note pop just as they do on the GS II, that eye-pleasing contrast and saturation we've come to love from Samsung's AMOLED displays, and little vibrancy is lost when viewed from the side. However, color accuracy does start to wander a bit. This is indeed a PenTile display and so there are more green sub-pixels than any other color. This gives everything an ever-so slightly sickly tinge, especially when viewed off-angle..."

Samsung's Galaxy Note is a large Android v2.3 phone (or mini-tablet?) with a 5.3" Super AMOLED display with an HD resolution: 1280x800. Other specs include a dual-core 1.4Ghz processor, 8mp camera, touch display with pen input (it has a stylus). The phone is 9.65mm thick and weights 178 grams. The note is now shipping in Europe (£592 in the UK, without a contract).

Samsung Electronics says that it plans to launch products with flexible OLED panels next year, probably starting with mobile phones, then followed by tablets and other portable devices. The company is actually hoping to introduce the products in the "earlier part of 2012".

This was reported before, although up until now Samsung said the plan is to launch flexible OLEDs in 2013 or 2014, so it's good to see they are advancing more quickly than they thought before. Samsung's flexible AMOLEDs will be fabricated on a plastic (Polyimide) substrate and will be able to withstand high temperature (up to 350-400 degrees). The displays can be bendable - but we assume that the first products will use them inside rigid glass cases - so it'll actually be "curved" displays and not flexible ones.

Update: it turns out that Kaneka's installation at the Milano art show in April 2011 used 2,500 OLED lighting panels - which makes it the largest OLED lighting insatllation ever, and makes OSRAM's Qube pale in comparison... Thanks for tip Tomoko!

OSRAM unveiled a beautiful new OLED installation at the Qubique Berlin Tempelhof 2011 exhibition, which uses over 1,400 OSRAM round Orbeos panels. It was designed by Labme, OSRAM's new open source OLED lighting design platform.

I think this is the largest OLED lighting installation ever produced, replacing Philip's Living Shapes OLED wall installation which had 1,152 Lumiblade panels. But the amount of panels is still small compared to Mitsubishi's 6-meter OLED GeoGlobe which uses 10,362 PMOLED displays. Anyway, here's a nice photo of the Qube in the making:

Corning launched a new glass called Lotus Glass, which was developed for cutting-edge displays - such as OLEDs and next-gen LCDs (based on LTPS and Oxide-TFTs). Corning explains that the new glass has a high annealing point that delivers the thermal and dimensional stability required by these new high-performance displays. Lotus Glass has already been qualified and is now in production.

Lotus Glass's intrinsic stability means it can withstand the manufacturing thermal cycles better than conventional glass, and so enable tighter design rules needed in advanced backplanes (which are needed for high resolution and fast response time). It's good to see a new glass substrate from Corning, although we're still waiting for Corning's future flexible glass as shown in their "Day made of glass" video released a few months ago (which features future designs made with durable, transparent and even flexible glass displays):

A few days ago we reported that AUO will show a 6" transparent OLED panel, and today we have some more details and nice photo of this display. The display features 400x300 resolution, 36% transmittance and 400 cd/m² brightness. Both the cathode and anode are transparent - and so light is emitted in both sides.

Idemitsu Kosan established a new OLED materials manufacturing company in South Korea today. The new company (called Idemitsu Electronic Materials Korea) will join Idemitsu current OLED production facility in Omaezaki, Shizuoka - and will supply materials to customers in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Europe and other countries. Idemitsu says they see further expansion in the OLED industryin the coming years.

The new company will start production sometimes in 2012. It will have around 30 employees (5 transfered from Idemitsu Kosan) and will have an initial capital of 30 billion won (about $30 million USD).

Nokia is showing a beautiful new bendable device prototype called the Kinetic. The idea is that you can bend and twist the whole device to perform certain actions: for example bending it towards you is used to select an option or zoom-in on an image.

Nokia didn't say what kind of display technology is used in this device , but it's most likely a flexible OLED. The display is 4" in size and has impressive viewing angles according to reports. In the past two years we've seen several companies present flexible/bendable OLED Prototypes: Samsung, LG and UDC, Toshiba, Sony, AUO and the FDC with UDC. Nokia is already buying AMOLED panels from Samsung and LG, so it's likely they are collaborating with one of the Korean makers.

During AUO's conference call, the company gave some interesting updates on their OLED program. As was suggested before, the company is already sampling panels - these are 4" displays for smartphones that use RGB matrix and sport 247 PPI. AUO says that these displays will offer superior quality compared to Samsung's PenTile based displays, especially on fine text (of course samsung is also offering the RGB-matrix Super AMOLED Plus displays). The products will ship in Q2 2012, and the company is seeing interest from several device makers.

AUO's current capacity is 7000-8000 monthly substrates in their Gen-3.5 fab. In 2H 2012 the company plans to bring their Gen-4.5 fab online with a monthly capacity of 15,000 substrates.