Polymer OLEDs (PLED): introduction and market status - Page 4

According to the OLED Association, Panasonic said that they are progressing fast enough to launch the 55" (probably 56") UHD OLED TV in Q4 2013. Panasonic will start mass production in its Himeji Pilot Gen-5.5 line (which means initial production will be very limited). If this report is true it means a real acceleration as Panasonic previously said they will only be ready in 2015 (although you may say that the current Himeji line will not be real mass production in any case).

Panasonic OLED TV prototype, IFA 2013

Panasonic's OLED TV panel, unveiled in January 2013, is produced using ink-jet printing and uses an RGB subpixel matrix (direct-emission). Panasonic is using Sumitomo's PLED materials, and AUO's oxide-TFT Substrates. The company is collaborating with Sony on OLED technologies.

Researchers from the University of Utah developed a new polymer light emitting device that can be tuned to emit light of different colors, including white (without the need to mix several emitters). The new material is a polymer molecule doped with platinum. The same material can also be used to develop efficient OPVs or Spintronics-based memory devices.

The device currently being developed at Utah isn't an OLEDs as it only emits light when stimulated by other light (such as a laser) and not when simulated by an electrical current. But the researchers say that a white OLED based on this technology is possible and predict that it will be developed within two years. The current device isn't actually white, it emits colored color (more on this below) and they say it will take about one year till they manage to develop a white Pt-1 device.

In 2012 we posted about a the Spin-OLED, a new spin-polarized polymer efficient OLED device developed at the University of Utah and the Israeli Technion. Now Professor Z. Valy Vardeny from Utah gave a talk (titled "Spin Effects in Organic Optoelectronic Devices") describing the Spin-OLED in more details:

Professor Vardeny also gives an introduction to organic Spintronics and introduces the hybrid organic/inorganic spintronics device and explains how OPV can be enhanced by spin 1/2 radical additives.

As promised, Panasonic showed 56" 4K (3840x2160) OLED TV panel at the IFA 2013 exhibition. The company had several prototypes on display, and I believe these are the same panels as the ones Panasonic unveiled at CES 2013 in January 2013.

Panasonic panels are made using an "all-printing" method, and Sumitomo Chemical revealed that these prototypes use the company's PLED materials. Panasonic's panel uses a substrate (probably Oxide-TFT) provided by Sony (which are actually made by AU Optronics) - as part of the two companies collaboration. According to the latest reports, they only plan to start OLED production at around 2015.

Some web sites are reporting that Panasonic is set to unveil a 20" 4K OLED tablet at the IFA 2013 event next week. Those sites are relying on auto-translated Japanese text. But in fact the company will not show such a tablet. In an English PR, Panasonic says they will show a 4K 20" tablet and a 4K OLED panel prototype - those are two different devices.

I'm guessing Panasonic's 4K OLED panel will be the same 56" 4K (3840x2160) OLED TV panel shown at CES 2013. This panel was made using an "all-printing" method. Sumitomo Chemical revealed that this TV prototype used the company's PLED materials. Panasonic's panel uses a substrate (probably Oxide-TFT) provided by Sony (which are actually made by AU Optronics) - as part of the two companies collaboration.

Audi, Philips, Automotive Lighting, Merck and the University of Cologne successfully concluded an OLED research project (called OLED 3D), and developed the world's first large-area 3D OLED car rear lighting panels and installed a prototype on an Audi TT.

A 3D OLED means that the OLEDs have a curved surface - not just in one direction. These are glass based panels. It's not flexible glass (like Corning's Willow glass), it's the regular glass Philips are using in their regular OLEDs, but curved. The material used (made by Merck) are soluble, and the production process is described as "web printing" by Philips (I'm not sure what is meant by that).

Researchers from Northumbria University and PolyPhotonix developed a new OLED-based "sleep mask" that can be used to treat sight loss noninvasively. The researchers say that this new device is the world's first noninvasive primary-care treatment for diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

The researchers are already doing extensive clinical trials (at the home). They say that if this proves useful, it will be much cheaper than current treatments (and it's also non-invasive).

Sumitomo Chemical announced it has developed a new PLED inkjet-printing technology that achieves 423 PPI on glass substrates sized 370x470 mm. We don't have more information about Sumitomo's new production process, but apparently it isn't ready for commercialization yet as the company says they will "continue to improve the performance and process of PLED materials".

Panasonic printed P-OLED 56-inch OLED prototype

Panasonic used Sumitomo's PLED materials in their 56" 4K2K printed OLED TV prototype shown at CES 2013. Panasonic and Sumitomo has been collaborating on OLED TVs since 2009. The companies hope that ink-jet printing will enable them to lower the production costs of OLED panels compared to evaporation based production. Panasonic aims to launch their first OLED TVs in 2015. The company is collaborating with Sony, and may setup a production-JV together (although if this happens, it's not clear which production technology will be used).

Sumitomo Chemical unveiled new flexible PLED lighting panels. These structured panels (they have a patterned printed on them) are produced in an ink-jet printed process. Sumitomo showed several lamp prototypes, including the one shown below:

Sumitomo plans to start volume production of such panels by March 2015 (fiscal year 2014) - using both ink-jet and roll-to-roll processes. They still need to extend the lifetime of their panels, improve the luminance performance and improve their production yield rates.

The UK's Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) posted some updates on their OLED program. They have recently produced defect free OLED lighting samples. They managed to produce panels that has large (over 250 cm²) emissive areas (they are producing these panels on 8" substrates and so could exceed 160x160 mm panels).

The CPI developed two kinds of panels - the first uses small molecule materials and the second uses full solution-processable PLED materials. They have also produced samples that use a hybrid structure with a PEDOT layer (deposited using a slot die process) with an evaporative emissive layer (that has better efficiency and performance compared to the PLEDs). The 154x154 mm example shown above is the hybrid structure.