Cambridge Display Technology - Page 7

Update: In March 2011, we posted a follow-up interview with Andy, updating us on Plextronics' business and technology.

OLED-Info.com recently had the opportunity to interview Andy Hannah, the CEO and President of Plextronics. Plextronics was founded in 2002, as a spin-out from Carnegie Mellon University, and is developing critical technology that enables broad market commercialization of organic electronic devices. Such devices include plastic chips, polymer solar cells and organic lights and sensors.

Q: You have developed an optimized hole injection layer for PLED devices. Can you explain that?

The hole injection layer or HIL functions as a gatekeeper that balances the flow of electricity into the OLED, improving the efficiency of generated light, and smoothing out any rough electrodes that would otherwise cause rapid device failure. Plextronics has developed Plexcore HIL, a non-acidic, solvent-based ink that when printed using spin-cast or inkjet techniques form carefully tuned thin-films that function as the HIL.

Cambridge Display Technology on Wednesday said it has set a private placement of about 2.19 million shares at a purchase price of $8 per share.

Cambridge Display, a maker of diodes for flat-panel displays, said the agreement with institutional and other investors also includes warrants to purchase up to 656,250 additional shares at an exercise price of $12 per share. The company said it expects to raise $17.5 million from the placement.

Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) announces two major milestones in the development of long lifetime, high efficiency light emitting polymers for full color, video capable displays.

A phosphorescent red device has been produced by CDT and Sumitomo Chemical which has a lifetime of half a million hours from an initial luminance of 100cd/m(2); this is a record for lifetime of solution-processable materials of any color. The efficiency is also improved at over 7cd/A. Red efficiency is especially important as this color consumes the largest share of power input in a color device, so improvements in red efficiency have important practical implications.

Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) and Sumitomo Chemical have confirmed that their Joint Venture company, Sumation, commenced trading on November 14th 2005.

Sumation supplies polymers and formulated inks for use in both development and commercial P-OLED display and lighting applications. The company is headquartered in Tokyo, and has an R & D team located in both the UK and Japan, while production of polymer materials will take place under sub contract at the Sumitomo Chemical plant in Osaka.

Cambridge Display Technology today reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2005. The Company is a pioneer in the development of polymer organic light emitting diode technology, and completed its initial public offering in December 2004.

Revenues in the third quarter of 2005 were $6.6 million, compared with $1.6 million for the corresponding quarter in 2004, an increase of 299%. Year to date revenues for 2005 were reported at $10.8 million, compared with $5.5 million for the first three quarters of 2004, an increase of 96%. In the third quarter of 2005, the largest source of revenue was equipment and supplies, including the sale of four ink jet printers and associated ink supply, sales of CDT's Eclipse range of digital test equipment and technical services revenues.

Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) has announced another important step in the development of polymer light emitting diode (P-OLED) display technology with the production of a number of 14 inch full color displays using ink jet printing.

The displays were produced at CDT's Technology Development Centre in the UK, and feature a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels x RGB, equivalent to almost three million sub-pixels, or over 30 million ink jet drops.The active matrix panels use an amorphous silicon backplane, and were made using a multi-nozzle approach - up to 128 nozzles - with no interlacing, and are believed to be the first of their kind ever produced.

CDT announced a red dendrimer OLED device with a 250,000-hour lifetime from an initial luminance of 100cd/m2, compared to the 150,000 hour-lifetime device announced this May and 15,000 hour lifetime in 2004. The company also said it will ally with Sumitomo Chemical for PLED material supply.

Lifetimes for devices using dendrimer technology using the new red materials at 400cd/m², 800cd/m² and 1000cd/m² are estimated at 15,600 hours, 3,900 hours and 2,500 hours respectively.

Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) has announced an upgrade to the specification of its Eclipse range of digital test equipment for use in the characterisation of emissive display devices including polymer light emitting diodes (P-OLEDs).

The new specification includes remote calibration which allows the systems to be re-calibrated in situ, and pulsed IVL testing, which combines the ability to test device lifetime and opto-electrical response in one system. CDT has also announced a new 'entry level' Eclipse system with only eight channels, and this is expected to appeal to smaller companies and academic institutions.

Revenues in the second quarter of 2005 were $2.7 million, compared with $2.6 million for the corresponding quarter in 2004, an increase of 4%. First quarter revenues for 2005 were reported at $1.6 million. The majority of revenues continue to arise from Technology Services and Development and include receipts from companies including Samsung Electronics, Sumitomo Chemical and Toppan.

Net loss was $6.7 million for Q2 2005 (2004: $3.8 million), bringing the first half net loss to $15.4 million; net loss for the first half of 2004 was $21.5 million. The 2004 figure included a $12.2 million accounting charge connected with the acquisition of CDT Oxford.

Cambridge Display Technology, which is helping MicroEmissive Displays (MED) to overcome its manufacturing problems, is confident that MED will resolve its issues satisfactorily.

"CDT and MED are closely collaborating," Dr S B Cha, CDT’s commercial v-p, told Electronics Weekly. "We are more than just a licensing company we are a research services company. All of our licensees find you start manufacturing at a low level, and then find the technological advances which give you increases in yield," he said.