OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status - Page 23

Vitex Systems today announced that it has signed a license agreement with Advanced Neotech Systems (ANS) Corporation of Korea. The agreement includes a technology transfer package from Vitex to ANS, and gives ANS the non-exclusive rights to make and sell GuardianTM thin-film encapsulation systems, which can be used in the manufacturing of organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays. While the financial terms of agreement were not disclosed, the license includes an upfront fee and on-going royalty payments based on tool sales.

Thin-film encapsulation is the obvious trend for significant cost reduction and reduced thickness of OLED displays on rigid substrates, and is a must for OLED displays on flexible substrate. Vitex is the leading technology supplier in this field, and we are excited about our ongoing relationship with them, said KB Bae, president of ANS. With the recent investment in our company by SNU Precision coupled with our license agreement with Vitex, we now have the financial strength and technological capability to address the developing OLED display market. Moreover, the addition of Guardian to our deposition equipment portfolio will allow us to be more competitive in the marketplace.

Commenting on its agreement with ANS and licensing successes, Chyi-Shan Suen, director of sales and marketing for Vitex, said, ANS has been one of Vitex's equipment partners for the past two years. Signing this license agreement not only validates ANS’s confidence in Vitex’s BarixTM technology and IP portfolio strength, but also reaffirms the growing adoption and need of our thin-film encapsulation technology to enable future OLED displays. He adds, This announcement follows on the heels of a licensing agreement signed in September with a major optical film manufacturer for our proprietary Flexible Glass technology, which also illustrates the success of our new licensing model."

Universal Display Corporation announced that it has been awarded a $730,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract by the U.S. Army Research Laboratories (ARL) to continue its development of innovative encapsulation technology for flexible OLEDs.

In this program, entitled Flexible and Conformal Environmental Barrier Technology for Displays, Universal Display will be using a new approach to encapsulate a long-lived, active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) display prototype built on flexible metal foil. During the prior Phase I program, Universal Display and Princeton University demonstrated the feasibility of this multilayer encapsulation process based on plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (or PECVD). This technology, pioneered at Princeton University, is designed to enable the deposition of protective, barrier films onto an OLED’s top surface, a critical element on the development roadmap for flexible OLED displays.

The U.S. Display Consortium (USDC) and National Starch and Chemical Co. (NSC, Bridgewater, N.J.) today announced that their joint R&D project on packaging technology for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays has yielded commercially viable sealants and packaging adhesives. NSC has commercialized several of these products under the Eccoseal(TM) brand name within its Emerson & Cuming division, and will continue to launch products derived from the program in 2006-2007. Begun in October 2002 under a grant from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, the contract was completed last month, with a total R&D investment of $2.21 million, cost-shared between USDC and NSC.

The contract outlined a program for developing a radiation-curable perimeter sealant for both plastic and glass OLED packages.

DisplaySearch and cintelliq have announced a distribution agreement whereby cintelliq will produce and DisplaySearch will market and distribute the Quarterly Organic Semiconductor Patent Analyst Report (OSPA).
The Quarterly Organic Semiconductor Patent Analyst Report is a 200+ page quarterly report that provides an overview of patents related to organic semiconductor technologies that were published or granted by the European, Japanese, US or World patent offices in the previous quarter. Each issue analyses about 1200 patents, covering areas such as LEDs, substrates, photovoltaics, transistors, memory cells, encapsulation, materials, patterning, deposition, lasers, sensors, and fabrication.
The report classifies patents to identify areas of greatest activity, as well as highlighting interesting trends in research and patenting. The report also analyses the patents by assignee, tracking the major players in the industry and spotting new entrants to the field. Patents issued to academic organizations are monitored, as are patents issued to the major OLED licensors, Kodak and CDT, and their licensees.

Read more here

Thin-film encapsulation materials supplier Vitex Systems Inc. plans to change its business model to focus on the company’s portfolio of IP and related engineering services.
Vitex (San Jose) has for the past few years done significant development of its Barix thin-film barrier encapsulation technology for manufacturing OLED displays as well as roll-to-roll Flexible Glass technology. The company had a pilot production plant in Windsor, Ct., that manufactured some materials. Under the new business arrangement, Vitex will close the plant and license the core IP to substrate makers having high-volume roll-to-roll manufacturing capacity.

In addition, capital equipment makers will be able to license the IP for Vitex’s Guardian thin-film deposition system with access to the company’s hardware and software.
Vitex expects the revised business model to enable OLED display manufacturers and producers of organic optoelectronic devices to speed time-to-market for thinner, lighter, lower-cost products.

GE Global Research is presenting details on its successful development of a substrate system for flexible OLEDs at the Flexible Displays & Microelectronics Conference, Feb. 6-9 in Phoenix, Ariz. The system features a developmental high-temperature Lexan polycarbonate (PC) film from GE - Plastics combined with a transparent, ultra-high-barrier coating to help protect the OLED device against oxygen and moisture.

This research, jointly funded by the U.S. Display Consortium (USDC) and GE, is designed to address the critical need for plastic substrates that can enable cost-effective, lightweight, flexible organic displays. Min Yan, GE materials scientist, will give a presentation on the new substrate system, which is currently being produced in batch mode and will ultimately be moved to a roll-to-roll process for cost efficiency. In addition, GE - Plastics is featuring a variety of plastic films for electrical/electronic display applications during the exhibition.

Universal Display Corporation announced it has been awarded a $69,999 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I contract by the U.S. Army Research Laboratories (ARL), for a program entitled Flexible and Conformal Environmental Barrier Technology for Displays.

During this Phase I program, Universal Display will integrate a novel low-temperature plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) process coating technology with its proprietary FOLED®, TOLED® and PHOLED™ technologies. The PECVD process is based on pioneering research at Princeton University, which is believed to enable the deposition of flexible and protective films onto the top surface in an OLED without causing damage to the OLED. The end result will be the demonstration of a flexible OLED display prototype built on a stainless steel substrate. This research is an important element toward the Company’s goal of developing a rugged, long-lived, thin and lightweight flexible OLED display technology for both military and commercial applications.

eMagin Corp. has teamed with the Univ. of Michigan's Solid-State Electronics Laboratory (SSEL) to win a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract from The Office of Naval Research to study novel approaches for thin-film encapsulation. This research will enable small, lightweight displays and, potentially, flexible displays. For this project, eMagin and the Univ. of Michigan team will demonstrate a rugged and reliable thin-film encapsulation method for OLED displays.

"This award will advance technology to foster new generations of displays," said Susan Jones, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, eMagin Corp., in a statement. "The promise of this research is a rugged, low-cost encapsulation technique and process that can be applied to microdisplays as well as larger format OLED devices." According to professor Jerzy Kanicki, head of the Organic & Molecular Electronics research group at the University of Michigan, "This project should enable us to move key technology from the lab to the customer and enable a whole new generation of display products."

Vitex Systems today announced it has received a major order from a leading Korean OLED display manufacturer. The order is for Vitex's Guardian(TM) thin-film encapsulation system, which is slated for shipment this August.

According to Dr. Malcolm J. Thompson, CEO of Vitex, this order is the culmination of an extensive two-year R&D effort with this customer. "This order takes our relationship one step further as we work with this customer to integrate thin-film encapsulation in-situ with OLED device fabrication-truly disrupting the industry's current manufacturing norm. We are extremely pleased to have reached this pinnacle of success with this major OLED player as it continues to underscore the growing global confidence surrounding Vitex in delivering the industry's most effective solution for the manufacture of oled displays.

Among the patents now allowed in the US is a patent relating to OLEDs which comprise hole transport, electron transport and emissive components, using type II interfaces, contained in the same molecule. This is believed to be of considerable importance in the context of the printing of OLED devices. Molecules containing 'type II' interfaces are believed to be important in achieving high efficiency display devices.

Other new US patents allowed include a patent relating to the use of a dielectric barrier layer over the key emissive layer to protect it from damage due to sputtering of a conductive layer. This is expected to have important application in top emitting devices in which the light does not have to pass between the transistors but, more efficiently, through a transparent cathode structure.