OLED Lifetime: introduction and market status - Page 22

At their yearly share holder meeting, UDC reviewed their company's and the OLED industry's progress. UDC also highlights continued adoption of its energy-efficient PHOLED technology in commercial displays and advances in its flexible OLED, white OLED lighting, and printable, phosphorescent P(2)OLED(TM) technologies.

Universal Display’s Chief Executive Officer, Steven V. Abramson, began the meeting by reviewing progress in the commercialization of the Company’s OLED technologies over the past year. Mr. Abramson followed this by highlighting advances in next generation technologies for display and lighting applications, and providing a vision of the future for the Company and the OLED industry.

The last year has seen a number of steps forward for both Universal Display and the OLED industry, Mr. Abramson stated. Our high efficiency, phosphorescent OLED technology is essential for the production of low-power consumption displays. Through commercial agreements with industry leaders, we have seen increasing numbers of active-matrix OLED displays that use our technology, in products that include KDDI, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba cell phones, as well as iRiver and Teclast multi-media players. As the market for smaller-area OLED displays solidifies, the next wave of product applications like laptops, computer monitors and TVs is taking shape. A number of announcements have also been made about an increasing demand for AMOLED displays and plans to expand production capacity to meet this demand. As the market continues to grow, we believe that we are well-positioned to participate in that growth.

Mr. Abramson also highlighted progress in the Company’s core OLED technologies. In addition to reviewing the Company’s 102 lm/W breakthrough in white OLEDs that was reported two days earlier, Mr. Abramson discussed key advances in PHOLED, P²OLED and flexible OLED technologies. He also reported a new blue PHOLED material system, at CIE(0.16, 0.25) with over 15,000 hours of operating lifetime (to 50% initial luminance) at 500 nits, which is nearly double the lifetime reported a year ago.

In addition, Mr. Abramson highlighted a number of exciting prototypes on exhibit at the meeting that demonstrate the Company’s core technologies. These included a flexible OLED display built in collaboration with LG Display and partially supported by the U.S. Department of Defense. Also on display were inkjet-printed samples built using the Company’s solution-processible P²OLED technology and materials, and examples of commercial products with OLED displays from CMEL, Pioneer and Samsung SDI. Other technical advances, including those in the Company’s infra-red OLED and organic vapor-jet printing technologies, were also described.

Mr. Abramson concluded, Today, OLED technology is commercial, offering its benefits to manufacturers and consumers alike. The near future will bring bigger and brighter displays, OLED TVs will become even more common, and our next-generation technologies will continue to be refined and advanced. Our phosphorescent OLED technology offers a real ‘green’ solution for display and lighting applications with its energy efficiency and environmental appeal. We believe that our UniversalPHOLED and other OLED technologies will be at the very core of this progress.

At the end of the project period, the OLLA project consortium presents its final milestone: the basic technology for a white OLED light source, with an efficacy of 50.7 lumens per watt at an initial brightness of 1.000 cd/m² based on the Novaled PIN OLED technology. The OLLA project is a joint basic research consortium, headed by Philips Lighting.

The OLED technology is generating a novel and very attractive class of solid-state light sources, which are flat, thin, and very lightweight. Due to its freedom of design, OLED lighting technology offers many possibilities for new lighting applications achieving substantial energy savings. Within OLLA 24 partners of 8 European countries have been working closely together developing OLED technology for lighting purposes with the goal to reach an efficacy of 50 lumens per watt combined with a lifetime of over 10.000 hours at 1.000 cd/m2 initial brightness.

Philips Research and Novaled, together with the partners reached the project targets in efficacy, color rendering and brightness. The lifetime of the Novaled device even exceeded the promised value by one order of magnitude.

The Novaled PIN technology has the potential to further improve the power efficiency. It’s in line with the technology roadmap that in the near future some 100 lm/W OLEDs will be achievable, adds Dr. Martin Vehse from Novaled.

Collecting all light of the device in a laboratory set-up with a macro extractor, we measure even more than 80 lumens per Watt, comments Dr. Volker van Elsbergen,
Philips Research, the achievement. "This shows that one of the keys to higher efficiencies will be better light outcoupling technologies. \

Besides the record values listed above, the OLLA project delivered the first large sized ITO-free OLEDs, the first large-area printed OLEDs and several ICT demonstrators. All demonstrators were on show last Thursday on a public event in Eindhoven.

Philips, Osram Opto Semiconductors, Siemens, Novaled and Fraunhofer IPMS will continue the development of OLED lighting technology in a follow-up project. Within this new OLED100.eu project, the efficiency, lifetime and size of OLEDs will further increased.

Merck KGaA announced today that it is launching several new OLED materials, including a blue singlet emitter (SEB series) that features ultra deep blue color coordinates. Measured in solvent, this dopant shows a color as deep as CIE(x;y) 0.15/ 0.09 with a full width half maximum (FWHM) of only 54 nm.

Merck said that in a bottom emission OLED device, an external quantum efficiency (EQE) in excess of 5.6% and color coordinates of 0.15/ 0.10 can be achieved with this new material. The stable material performance at high driving current and high temperatures makes the material ideal for passive matrix based automotive and mobile display applications. In active matrix top emission devices, the material allows panel-makers to achieve a high NTSC color gamut while drastically reducing power consumption and increasing product lifetime.

Merck also has developed a new light blue dopant for two color white or monochrome OLED applications. At CIE(x;y) 0.14/0.27, this material shows outstanding efficiency (7% EQE and 12.5 cd/A @ 1000cd/m²) and excellent lifetime above 36000h at 1000cd/m² for a basic bottom emission device structure.

UDC describes a new simplified WOLED architecture that represents an important milestone toward the achievement of cost-effective OLEDs for lighting applications. Offering a warm white color with CIE coordinates of (0.45, 0.46) and 30 lumens per Watt (with outcoupling), this WOLED device boasts an extremely long operating lifetime, exceeding 200,000 hours at 1,000 cd/m2, and may be suitable for a variety of entry lighting products.

Dr. D’Andrade will also report on a new white OLED with record-breaking power efficacy of 72 lumens per Watt. Both devices use transport and injection materials provided by Universal Display’s collaboration partner, LG Chem.

This work was funded, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Under the SBIR program and the Solid State Lighting Initiative, the DOE is working to accelerate advances in OLEDs as an energy-efficient, solid-state lighting technology. The DOE views OLEDs as a pivotal emerging technology that promises to fundamentally alter lighting in the future. Through the use of Universal Display’s PHOLED technology, WOLEDs have the potential to meet the DOE’s future performance targets, including a power efficiency of 150 lumens per Watt, in an exciting new thin form factor.

In a new report released Wednesday on the characterization of AMOLED display technology, DisplaySearch addressed the Sony XEL-1 TV and the technology’s sub-pixel architecture, micro cavity, and compensation circuits.

The report includes measurements of lifetime by color and image, power consumption differential aging, burn-in, contrast ratio and luminance. DisplaySearch also addresses the system architecture as well as the organic material, including thicknesses.

Toray Industries announced that it has succeeded in developing blue light emitting materials, boasting the world’s highest levels of efficiency and pure color emissions, for use in full-color OLED displays.

The combination of Toray’s proprietary molecular design technology and nano-dispersion technology was instrumental in the material achieving superior light emitting performances of luminous efficiency 6 cd/A (candela/ampere) and color purity (CIE(x,y) = (0.14,0.10)) in combination with Toray’s electron-transporting material.

Researchers have developed an improved oOLED sealing (encapsulation) process to reduce moisture intrusion and improve device lifetime.

OLEDs have better color and flexibility and the capability of larger displays, but companies still need an inexpensive encapsulation method that can be used to mass produce organic electronics that don’t allow moisture in, said Wusheng Tong, a senior research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

Manufacturers now seal displays in an inert atmosphere or in a vacuum environment. They glue a glass lid on top of the display substrate with a powder inside the display to absorb moisture that diffuses through the glue. These seals are expensive and labor-intensive to assemble.

With funding from GTRI’s independent research and development program, Tong and his GTRI collaborators senior research scientist Hisham Menkara and principal research scientist Brent Wagner have replaced the glass enclosure with a thin-film barrier formed by a less expensive conventional deposition method.

The researchers selected advanced ion assisted deposition, which utilizes reactive ions to deposit a high-density, pinhole-free thin silicon oxynitride (SiON) film on the OLED surface.

Read more here (Newswise)

In April 2008, we had the chance of interviewing Mary Kilitziraki, Fast2Light's project manager. Fast2Light is an integrated (9 companies, 3 research institutes and 2 universities) R&D project that aims to research and develop light emitting foils based on OLED tech.

Q: What are the major goals of the Fast2Light project? What will you consider to be a big success in the project?

Fast2Light aims to lay the foundations for marrying large-area roll-to-roll technologies with the field of organic electroluminescence, for all necessary layers in an OLED device on foil. We aim to set in place all the experimental platforms that when integrated will produce a high quality lighting foil. Yet, these technology platforms can be used in other electronic devices. We will indeed think ourselves as successful if we develop and master the new large-area processes and demonstrate these in a 30cmx30cm lighting foil in 3 years time. But equally important, one of the successes of the project will be the exploitation of our results, on platform level, in other fields of electronic devices.

OLED-T today announced the launch of its low temperature organic electron injector material EI-111-2Me. OLED displays are manufactured from a sandwich of different materials including the electron injector layer. This layer is responsible for injecting electrons from the cathode into the OLED structure, the efficiency of which is critical to the performance of the display.
 
EI-111-2Me is a low temperature replacement for Lithium Floride (LiF), the material typically used by OLED display manufactures as the electron injector layer within an OLED display. Low temperature OLED materials reduce the cost of manufacturing and the potential damage to the underlying layers of the display, thereby improving the lifetime and voltage drift over the lifetime of the OLED device.

EI-111-2 Me enables display manufacturers to improve the efficiency and lifetime of an OLED display, as well as reduce the operating voltage and minimising voltage drift. In customer trials using EI-111 as a direct replacement for LiF, display efficiency improved by 25 per cent and lifetime by 10 per cent.

EI-111-2 Me evaporates at 200oC as opposed to LiF which requires a temperature of over 600oC, making the deposition faster and more controlled and introducing the potential of using plastic as a substrate rather than glass. The reduced manufacturing temperature also eliminates the need for costly evaporation crucibles reducing the overall cost of manufacturing.

As the market for OLED matures display manufacturers are focused on reducing cost throughout the display supply chain. EI-111-2Me provides companies with a significant opportunity to reduce cost at the same time as improving the performance of OLED displays, said says Myrddin Jones, Chief Executive Officer at OLED-T.

OLED-T is sampling of EI-111-2Me with immediate effect and will commence volume production from the fourth quarter of 2008. The new material complements OLED-T’s already strong OLED material portfolio.

Samsung Electronics has acquired the IP assets of Clairvoyante Inc, an IP licensing company responsible for the development of PenTile subpixel rendering display technology and associated gamut mapping algorithms. The IP includes extending the lifetime of high-resolution mobile OLED displays.