OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status - Page 4

OTI Lumionics launched a new technology it calls Aerelight for Print technology, which uses paper-thin flexible OLED panels to light elements in print media.

OTI says that in order to enable low-cost production of flexible OLEDs, it designed its own manufacturing technology and advanced materials. This includes the company's own proprietary FlexTorr encapsulation technology.

A few days ago OLEDWorks announces its new OLED lighting series, the Brite 3 OLEDs, which include OLEDWorks' first flexible OLED lighting panels, branded as BendOLEDs.

BASF's Coatings division announced that OLEDWorks uses the company's flexible barrier solutions in its Bright 3 family of OLED panels (both flexible and rigid). OLEDWorks uses BASF materials as planarization layer to enable highly reliable thin-film encapsulation.

Taiwan's AU Optronics (AUO) developed a 13-inch 100 PPI transparent OLED display, specifically for AR applications. This is a highly-transparent display - with 68% transmittance.

AUO 6" transparent OLED prototype (2011)

To achieve such high transparency, AUO optimized the TFT array layer stack, the OLED cathode pattern and the encapsulation. This is the first transparent OLED AUO has developed since 2011. It will discuss this new display at SID Display 2018 - and will hopefully demonstrate it as well.

Many OLED producers believe that Ink-Jet printing of OLED emissive materials is the best way to achieve lower-cost OLED TV production, and to enable OLEDs to compete in the medium part of the TV market. Ink-Jet printing is an efficient process (less material waste compared to evaporation) and it can be very quick as well. The main drawbacks of inkjet are the limited resolution and the need for soluble emissive materials which are less efficient compared to evaporation ones.

A Kateeva OLED ink-jet printing system

These challenges are being overcome, and it seems that at least four groups (in Korea, Japan and China) are charging forward towards mass production of ink-jet printed OLEDs. Ink-jet printer makers and soluble material suppliers are also optimistic ink-jet printing commercialization will soon be here as the material performance gap is diminishing.

In 2015 the EU launched a 3-year €4 million OLED lighting project, the LEO project (Low-cost / energy Efficient OLEDs) that had an aim to develop efficient and cost-effective bendable OLED lighting technologies. The project consortium included Osram, and Cynora.

A month before the project officially ends, the partners updated on their progress. For this project, the partners develops several technologies, including low-cost metal foils integrating OLED anodes and possibly backside monitoring printed circuits, smart OLED top-electrode architectures and light out-coupling solutions and a novel thin film top-encapsulation strategies. These technologies together increased the light output by 50% while providing better surface scratch resistance.

The Holst Centre is demonstrating a new optimized encapsulation (barrier) layer for foldable OLED panels. The new barrier is made from an organic layer sandwiched between two layers of silicon nitride (SiN). These are standard materials, but by optimizing the stack design the researchers at the Holst Centre were able to control its mechanical properties and create a much more flexible barrier.

The Holst researchers used an organic material that can withstand 400 °C and can be applied by slot-die coating. This allows the SiN layers to be deposited at 350 °C, improving their quality and ability to prevent water penetration. The Holst tested the OLED prototypes that use the new barrier for 1,000 hours (in accelerated lifetime testing) and no black spots appeared, even after 10,000 folding cycles (bending radiud 0.5 mm).

Graphene is the world's most impermeable material, and as the material is also transparent, flexible and ultra-thin it makes sense to adopt graphene as an encapsulation layer for next-gen OLED displays. A UK project led by Cambridge University researchers have set out in 2015 to develop such a solution, and the researchers now report that they have demonstrated a viable graphene solution comparable to existing commercial OLED encapsulation technologies.

In its pure form, graphene is permeable to all gases, but real life materials are never entirely pure and defects and holes harm the material's permeability. The new research used ALD and CVD to create large-area high-quality single-layer graphene sheets which were stacked to create a multi-layer coating. The researchers say that a ~10 nm barrier layer that includes 3-4 layers of graphene (with AlOx in between) is an effective solution for OLED displays. The 10 nm layer maintains a high optical transparency (>90 %) and high flexibility.

Japan-based OLED material maker Idemitsu Kosan announced a new partnership with Toray Industries to co-develop OLED materials.

Toray and Idemitsu will mutually utilize the OLED materials, technology and expertise that both companies possess, and will cooperate in the development of new materials and material evaluation. The two companies will also jointly use their evaluation facilities and production facilities. Both companies hope that this collaboration will accelerate OLED material development and enable lower cost production.

The Fraunhofer FEP institute, in collaboration with Nippon Steel & Sumikin Materials (NSMAT) and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation (NSSMC), developed a new OLED lighting prototype that is made on a stainless steel substrate.

The researchers say that a stainless steel substrate has several advantages compared to glass or plastic - it has excellent thermal conductivity and excellent barrier properties. The lighting panel features an extremely homogenous OLED light, thanks to the planarization layer developed by NSSMC. The prototype panel was produced at the Fraunhofer's R2R research line.

AP Systems announced that it has received orders for OLED deposition equipment from CSoT for the company's 6-Gen flexible AMOLED fab in Wuhan that is currently under construction.

AP Systems said that the whole order is worth $60.65 million and the equipment will be delivered starting in September 2017 until October 2018. AP Systems did not disclose the equipment list, but the company's main products are laser annealing equipment (used to produce LTPS substrates), laser list-off equipment and OLED encapsulation tools.