In October 2009 the Zumtobel group and the Fraunhofer Institute established a new OLED lighting company called LEDON OLED lighting to develop and manufacture OLED lighting modules. Today Zumtobel announced it is acquiring its partner shares in the company and renaming it Tridonic Dresden.

Tridonic LUREON REP module

LEDON's products were already marketed under the Tridonic brand (which is Zumbotel group's lighting components business). Managing directors Jörg Amelung and Patrik Danz will continue to head the company which currently employs 11 people.

A slide detailing the upcoming Blackberry A10 has been leaked, and it details a phone that is not very much different from the Z10, except for the display - which is a 5" 1280x720 (295 PPI) S-Stripe OLED. If this is true, this will be Blackberry's second OLED phone following the Q10 with its square 3.2" 720x720 OLED.

Other features of the A10 include a dual-core 1.7Ghz CPU, LTE, NFC, BlackBerry OS 10.2, 8mp camera, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of flash memory and a large 2,800 mAh battery. Interestingly back in October 2012, a slide detailing the upcoming Aristo phone was leaked, with specs that are pretty similar to this, although the display was a bit smaller at 4.65" - but still an OLED with a resolution of 1280x720.

According to reports from China, TCL executive Liangqi Chun said that the company may establish an 8.5-Gen OLED TV production line. Lianqi says that while OLEDs aren't mature yet (as costs are high and yields are low), there is a chance that in a few years OLED TVs will be commercialized and TCL will focus on that technology.

If this actually materializes, it's likely that the line will be owned by TCL's CSOT (China Star Optoelectronics Technology) which already has an active AMOLED program.

In March 2012 we posted on Philips' structured or customized OLED. A structured OLED is an OLED lighting panel that includes a pattern (text, or image). Back then Philips said a typical order is about 100 pieces or more because it took them a long time to prepare the production line to make the panels.

Now Philips have apparently upgraded their process, and now they offer new "artwork" panels - structured white OLED square tiles (60 x 60 mm, white). Each panel costs €120 (including the driver and power supply) and delivery time is eight weeks. You simply send them your jpeg and they prepare the panel. Nice.

France based Genes'Ink launched a new silver-based solvent conductive ink for digital and screen printing. One of the major application they are targeting is the printing of efficient and transparent electrodes on flexible substrates for OLED displays. In fact Genes'Ink says that this ink will work on most substrates and is ready to use. It is compatible with most print heads.

Genes'Ink technology is based on research done at the universities of Marseilles and Grenoble. They claim that their technology offers superior conductivity at a competitive price.

Gazprom Dobycha Noyabrsk installed a 5.4 x 3.4 meter Diamond Vision OLED installation (Mitsubishi's tiled-PMOLED display) in their headquarters in Siberia, Russia. The display consists of 112 PMOLED modules (128 x 128 pixels each) in a 14 x 8 configuration to achieve a 1792 x 1024 resolution. The installer was Avilex.

This is the fourth Diamond Vision OLED installation we're aware of. The first one was in Merck's Material Research Center in Darmstadt, Germany. Merck's display measures 3.84 x 2.3 m with a 1280 x 768 resolution. The second installation is the Geo-Cosmos six-meter OLED globe at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo, Japan. This installation uses smaller modules (32x32) - in fact it uses 10,362 such modules to achieve more than 10 million pixels.

Pocket-Lint posted a short hands-on review of LG's 55EA9800 curved OLED TV. And they love it. They say the image is impressive (magnificent viewing angles and color accuracy) and the TV itself is beautiful (in fact it's "jaw-droppingly stunning"). It also offers great sound and "smart" features.

Interestingly, they say that because the OLED provides perfect viewing angles, the TV looks good even if you're not sitting straight in front of it in its "sweet spot". Regarding the advantages of a curved design, they say that "it's difficult to tell whether the curve of this OLED panel really adds to the viewing experience, but it certainly looks good."

According to a report from China, BOE Display successfully developed a 30" Full-HD AMOLED panel. We don't have any more technical details on this panel, but this development follows BOE's recent announcement of a 17" Oxide-TFT inkjet-printed AMOLED panel.

BOE Ordos 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab

The same report reiterates BOE's plans to inaugurate their 5.5-Gen LTPS fab in Ordos by the end of 2013. It is my understanding that this fab will begin production with LTPS LCDs and will later on switch to AMOLED Production. According to earlier reports, the fab cost is estimated at $3.44 billion.

LG Display developed a 5.2" Full-HD LCD panel that is only 2.2 mm thick. They say this is the world's thinnest Full-HD LCD panel. It's also the narrowest panel as it has a 2.3 mm bezel. This is the first panel to use LGD's Advanced One-Glass-Solution (OGS).

LGD says that Dual Flexible Printed Circuits, superior to a single circuit, have been inserted between the panel and touch film, reducing the number of lines on the panel by more than 30%. Utilization of a direct bonding system has also resulted in Optical Clear Resin between the panel and touch film for greater brightness.

In July 2012 the COMEDD was established as an independent institute at Fraunhofer (previously it was a department at the Fraunhofer IPMS). In April 2013 they held the opening ceremony. Since then they announced several new OLED technologies which I'll update on below.

My COMEDD friends sent me this video you see above of the opening ceremony laser show. I wasn't sure whether I should publish it, but the choice of sound track convinced me to do so - especially Hans Zimmer's Pirates of The Caribbean bit, I love that music. So enjoy...