OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status - Page 19

Roth & Rau MicroSystems will partner with the Holst Centre on barriers for flexible electronics. The two companies will develop and install a roll-to-roll PECVD deposition tool in the Holst Centre. This will be used for flexible OLED lighting and organic solar cells.

Cintelliq has released a new report (Encapsulation and barriers: A review of the patent landscape) and say that "The commercialisation of OLED technology is driving the growth of sealing, barrier and encapsulation technologies". OLEDs are responsible for more than 90% of the new patents in those technologies.

The increasing market acceptance of OLED based displays has been a major driver in the development of encapsulation systems, as OLED lighting begins to gain market adoption this too will also be a primary driver for further development. In fact the growth in encapsulation and barrier technologies has shown the same explosive growth OLED lighting has shown since 2000.

Samsung is aiming to improve their AMOLEDs in the near future. They claim they will double the efficiency (from 20cd/A to 40cd/A), the lifetime (from 50,000 to 100,000 hours) and the power consumption (from 62W to less than 30W). Samsung will use advanced color pattern methods to overcome the current FMM method large-size limitation. They will also move from glass encapsulation to thin-film, and apply Oxide substrate. They will also use only triplet OLED emitters instead of using both singlets and triplets.

Samsung has recently began to construct their new 5.5-Gen AMOLED plant, which will start production in July 2011. Samsung plans to invest $2.2 billion on that plant that will have 3 production lines (1300X1500mm). Having a larger wafer size results in better efficiencies for both small and large panels (such as 30" or 40" OLED TV panels). Samsung did not say whether the new methods will apply in the new plant only, or also in the current one.

The Holst Center has developed and produced a new flexible OLED that will be used on the back-side of a racecar rear-view mirror. This the first application of a "flexible OLED on foil", according to Holst. They have used Holst's encapsulation technology and Araldite composite materials of Huntsman Advanced Materials. In fact the OLED itself displays the logo Araldite. The OLED is a white "signage device" - it cannot change the display, and the logo is constructed by patterned deposition of light emitting polymer.

The car is the ORECA01 car from French racing team Oreca and they will will be using the mirror in the 24 hours Le Mans race (June 12-13). 12 hour of this race is in the dark, and people will be able to see the writing...

The Printable Electronics Technology Centre (PETEC) has announced plans for a new prototyping line to support the lighting and Organic Photovoltaic sectors. The new line is targeted at industries needing large area coating capability alongside the need for reproducible uniform and low defectivity thin film coating onto glass and plastic substrates.

It is designed to be an automated batch tool based on cassette handling of samples to minimise manual intervention. The specification has been aligned with the needs of the SSL and PV industry. It will produce up to 20 samples per day with a panel size from 100mm to 200mm square. The line will have slot-die and spin coating modules, metal and organic evaporation and encapsulation.  It will enable the deposition of solution and small molecule OLED material technologies. It will target fine coating active layers of 10-200nm thinness with uniformity of +-5% across the full panel width.

Last week we reported that PolyPhotonix plans to launch a 8" 60lm/W OLED Lighting panel. They will be using this line at PETEC.

More SID news: 3M will present OLED light extraction technology, providing significant efficiency improvements for OLED light sources and allowing for as much as a 100% increase in axial luminance.

3M will also show their Flexible Transparent Barrier (FTB) film, which provides water vapor resistance to protect OLED (or e-paper) displays, will also be showcased.

The Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University announced that Sunic System has become an industry partner in the center. The FDC, together with Sunic, will develop flexible OLED displays. The FDC has purchased a Gen-II OLED SUNICEL Plus 400 vacuum evaporation and encapsulation process tool from Sunic for its Tempe development facility.The tool will be installed in the fall (2010), with first devices anticipated in 1Q 2011.

The SUNICEL Plus system is designed to simplify OLED technology development and manufacturing, and is equipped to handle plastic substrates without interrupting the vacuum process. The system enables full color AMOLED and mono-color panel production with high electro luminescence (EL) performance and long lifetime.

Novaled is demonstrating OLEDs made on metal (steel) substrates that are only 0.7mm thick. Those substrates require specific top-emitting OLED structures, and Novaled has developed dedicated ITO-free OLEDs that has a similar performance to standard bottom-emission OLEDs. Novaled is also working on thin-film encapsulation that will enable flexible OLEDs.

Novaled say that metal substrates has several advantages: they will enable flexibility, they have good heat conduction properties, and the "open the roadmap" towards low-cost roll-to-roll production. They also look great and are very robust.

We have some more information about Linde's group and Shanghai University flexible OLED project. It turns out that the packaging and encapsulation is just the first phase, and should be completed by the end of 2010. In the second phase they will develop OLED materials (this will take 2-3 years). In the 2nd phase they will also work with TFT-LCD manufacturers to test volume production of the new OLED designs.

Linde themselves want to sell gases for OLED production, but they also want to get the OLED technology itself to market. They could sell the OLED technology itself via a technology transfer.

Linde Group and Shanghai University announced today that they will partner to develop new advanced packaging solutions for flexible displays (especially OLEDs) to enhance product quality and cost efficiencies. Linde has invested EUR 80,000 in the first phase of this project.

They aim to develop a new generation of thin-film encapsulation material and packaging solutions for the manufacturing of displays: single and composite structures of thin-film encapsulation materials and related gas application techniques.