Universal Display announced that they have extended their commercial supply agreement with LG Display - till October 31, 2013 (this agreement will automatically renew for additional twelve month periods, unless terminated). LGD is using UDC's PHOLED materials in AMOLED displays, and pay them for the chemical sales and a license fee (LGD has some small scale small-panel production, but their main OLED focus is on large panels for TVs).

UDC signed the original agreement with LGD (then LG.Philips) back in May 2007. In August 2011 they signed a long-term agreement with Samsung, and they probably will sign a similar with LG Display too, but LGD will most likely wait till they mass produce OLED panels (for their 55" OLED TVs).

Back in April we posted about light-emitting electrochemical cells (LEC), a cheaper (but less efficient) flexible alternative to OLED lighting. Today we learned that OSRAM are also actively researching organic LECs (OLECs), and indeed they view them as a mid-term technology (until OLED catches on) for low-cost wide-area luminaires.

OSRAM already produced large (15x14 cm) LEC prototypes on an R&D setup at Augsburg. A conductive polymer layer is initially applied to the supporting plastic foil that was previously provided with a conductive, transparent layer. Following an infrared drying process the light-emitting layer is applied via the same procedure. Electrons from standard metals can then be vapour-deposited. Unlike LEDs and OLEDs the OLEC production process does not need any clean rooms.

OSRAM is presenting a new luminaire (called the Rollercoaster) that features transparent OLED panels. OSRAM says that they have made some significant advances and they now plan to start series-production of such panels in 2014. 

The Rollercoaster looks like a glass and metal sculpture when turned-off and has a mobius-form (and so looks like a rollercoaster). It has 30 rectangular OLED panels, each with an active area of 18x6.5 cm. The OLEDs feature an efficiency of 20 lm /W and a transparency of 57% (which they say is the highest yet for such large panels. Fraunhofer's TABOLA transparent panels, which we reviewed back in April feature 45% transparency).

The Holst Centre has fabricated two flexible OLED lighting panels and gave them to the Queen of the Netherlands (one will be given to the Slovakian president). The OLED panels are placed inside 3D-printed curved frames:

The OLED panels are lighting photos of the Queen's grandchildren and a couple of photos from her visit to Slovakia. The photos are black/white masks with resolution 20 micron which are placed on the top of the OLED panels. The Holst centre can actually create these images directly in the OLED (i.e. a structured OLED), but this time they just placed the mask in front of the OLED because of a tight schedule. I'm not sure if that's the most impressive flexible OLED demonstration I've seen, but it sure is a nice gift for the queen.

Update: Kyushu University published an interesting video with more details about this new technology

Researchers from Japan's Kyushu University developed new efficient rare-metal free OLED emitter materials based on dicyanobenzene derivatives. They say that these new materials (which they call hyperfluorescence) are as efficient as phosphorescent OLEDs, but are cheaper (about 1/10th of the cost) because they do not require rare metals.

The researchers say that they are now seeking to collaborate with Japanese makers to commercialize this technology "at an early date". They already created some display prototypes with the new materials (see photo above).

KoreaTimes reports that next year Samsung plans to shift more investment from LCD to OLED. According to the article, Samsung Display will invest around 6 trillion won (about $5.58 billion), out of which only 29% in LCDs, and the rest (almost $4 billion) in OLED. That's actually lower than the planned $6 billion OLED investment for 2012 (we're not sure how much was the actual investment in 2012 though).

Samsung will invest in both small/medium OLEDs and large ones (OLED TVs). The same reports suggests that Samsung will announce the Galaxy S4 during the Mobile World Congress in February 2013. They are also working on the Galaxy Note 3 - which will have a 6.3" OLED display. OLED TV sales however, are only expected during late 2013, which is not good news.

Samsung has been awarded a new US patent (#8,330,347) that describes a foldable display made from two display panels that has smaller (but brighter) pixels at the "junction" between them. This allows the space between the panels to be smaller and create a foldable display. Such a design requires a panel where each pixel brightness can be controlled, so LCD is out of the question, and the patent mentions OLED, FED, Plasma and EL displays as possible candidates.

The original Korean patent was filed in 2006, so this isn't new. We hope that Samsung will be able to come-up with truly flexible OLED displays that will not need those smaller display at the junction because there won't actually be a junction - it'll be one large display.

eMagin announced that will pay a special dividend of $0.10 per share to all shares payable on December 26, 2012 (to shareholders of record as of December 20, 2012). eMagin says that this will not compromise their financial position. One of the reasons for the dividend is because of the ongoing uncertainty surrounding future dividend tax rates.

An eMagin OLED microdisplay

eMagin has 23.52 million outstanding shares which means that the total payment will be $2.35 million. eMagin has about $16.6 million in cash and so have no problem paying this dividend. The OLED microdisplay maker has a revenue guidance of $30-$34 million in 2012, and net income in Q3 2012 was $340,000.

CES 2013 is coming soon (January 8-11), and Samsung is set to release some exciting new technology. Today they released this teaser video, which doesn't really say anything:

Some expect Samsung to unveil the Galaxy S4 phone during CES, but it's not probably as it's quite early (they usually announce their flagship phones in March or May). They may unveil the new display used in this phone - perhaps the rumored 5" Full-HD AMOLED panel. Some say that Samsung will unveil a flexible panel, but I think it's quite unlikely.

The US FCC just released a new document as it tested LG's 55" OLED TV, the 55EM9700-UA. The TV includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules and so needs to get approved by the FCC before it can be sold in the US. So we don't have any official release date (or price) yet - it seems that LG is getting ready for launching this TV soon.

LG's OLED TV features FPR passive 3D, 100,000,000:1 contrast ratio and fast response time (1,000 times faster than LCD according to LG). The panel is only 4 mm thick, and the whole TV weighs just 10.9 Kg. The TV is based on LG Display's Oxide-TFT white-OLED with color filters (RGBW) OLED panel. LG are calling it the "Ultimate Display".