Today's personal OLED interview features Dr. Uwe Vogel from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.If you wish to be featured on such interview, contact us here.

Dr. Uwe Vogel, Head of Division Microdisplays & Sensors, Deputy Director, Fraunhofer Institute for Organic Electronics, Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP, Dresden, Germany

What was the last book you read? OLED Microdisplays, Technology and Applications, Edited by Francois Templier, 2014 (though I am NO author there ;o)

In March 2014, LG Chem announced the world's largest OLED lighting panel at 320x320 mm. The company now finally started mass producing this panel. The 0.88 mm thick N6SD30 features 60 lm/W, 800-1,200 lumens brightness, a high CRI (>90) and a color temperature of 3000K.

LG Chem also announced two new mounting solutions for easy OLED lighting panel installation with magnetic connections. First up we have the Rail Connection type (shown above), in which each panel is cased and a DC-DC driver is integrated. The AC-DC driver supplies the DC to the conductor rail, and each lighting unit is magnetically attached to the rail.

The €11-million 3-years European Flex-o-Fab project was launched in January 2013 with an aim to help commercialize flexible OLEDs. The researchers working on this project have now successfully fabricated a flexible OLED prototype in a roll-to-roll (R2R) process.

The OLED prototype (shown above) was produced on a PET plastic film, and the researchers say this is a significant breakthrough on the way to commercial production. It uses technologies developed as part of the Flex-o-Fab project in addition to the Holst Centre's own high-performance flexible barriers for organic electronics.

Kateeva and Sumiomo Chemical announced a non-exclusive key partnership to pair Sumitomo's PLED materials to Kateeva's YieldJet OLED ink-jet printing platform. The two companies hope this collaboration will lead to adoption of P-OLED inkjet printing by OLED TV makers.

Kateeva and Sumitomo will cooperate to co-develop high-quality reference data for customers, which will be optmized to Kateeva's platform and Sumitomo's inks.

Amazon is now offering special discounts towards the NFL SuperBowl (which will take place on February 2nd). One of the discounted TVs is LG's 55EC9300 - which is now available for $2,999 - down $500 off the normal price ($3,499).

The 55EC9300 is a 55" curved FHD OLED TV. This 2014 model features a 240Hz refresh rate, 500 cd/m² brightness and LG's WebOS platform. The EC9300 weighs 14.38 Kg without the stand.

While we're all waiting for Apple's first OLED product (which will most likely be the Watch), it turns out that the company has developed another novel technology based displays.

A new patent filing shows a new technology that turns a flexible OLED display into a speaker membrane. This is only possible with a flexible display as the membrane needs to vibrate. This is a cool invention that may turn any flexible display into a large-sized speaker. I'm not sure if this won't harm the display quality, but this is still a novel idea.

In March 2014, China's Skyworth released their first OLED TV, the 55" E980 (curved Full-HD WRGB OLED panel, made by LG Display). During CES 2015, the company had two TVs on display, both curved and with 4K (UHD) resolution (55" and 65" in size).

According to OLEDNet, Skyworth's marketing chief says that the company will launch four OLED TV models in 2015 for the Chinese market, including the 55" UHD one.

An explosion at LG Display's OLED TV factory in Paju killed two employees and injured four others (which are currently recovering). The explosion was caused by a Nitrogen gas leak, and LGD does not know the cause of the leak yet.

South Korea's labor ministry has ordered LGD to halt the operation in the production line while the investigation of the cause of the accident continues. LG Display offered an apology to the victims. This a tragic incident and we send our condolences to the families of those employees.

LG and Panasonic were not the only companies showcasing OLED TVs at CES. Chinese-based makers Haier, Changhong and Konka all showed new OLED TVs, and all of those TVs use 4K OLED panels supplied by LG Display.

So first up we have Haier with their 55" Full-HD 55H9800. (shown above). This is a curved TV that has a super-thin metal frame that is only 1.5 mm thick.

Audi had a nice OLED-based lighting installation at their booth at CES. They used 124 OLED panels (about 7x7 cm each) to form the Audi logo. Those OLEDs are red in color, probably as this is the standard backlight color for EU and US cars. The installation is a moving 3D one, and the Audi rings are formed from all sides, which makes it look a bit weird in the photo.

Audi has been mostly collaborating with Philips on OLED lighting, which leads me to believe that the red OLEDs used in this installation are made by Philips, but they also showed some designs in the past using OSRAM-made OLEDs.