PMOLED (Passive Matrix OLED): introduction and basics - Page 14

OSD Displays announces a new 1.45" color PMOLED module (the OSD160128P0907-10) that features 160x128 resolution, a thin profile (1.6mm) and a light weight (3.6 grams). According to OSD, this is the first such PMOLED that offers a resolution larger than 128x128.

The OSD160128P907-10 is highly adaptable to customer designs supporting parallel RGB interfaces 6/16/18 bit configurations, CPU/MCU type interfaces of 8/16/18 bits in both i80 and 68xx standards, and even supports a 4-wire SPI mode. The display hardware terminates on a 35 conductor, 0.5mm pitch tail which is compatible with flex-to-board ZIF type connectors by customer systems.

OSD announced a new PMOLED module, the OSD2864P1097-10. It's a monochrome white 128x64 1.3" panel that features 50,000 hours lifetime, 10,000:1 contrast ratio and 178 degree viewing angles. It is available in two version - with and without an anti-glare polarizer (at no extra cost). The OSD12864P1097-10 is paired with an SSD1306 IC offering I2C, 3 wire SPI, 4 wire SPI, 8-bit68xx Parallel and 8-bit 80XX Parallel settings.

The OLED Association decided to award this year's OLED Leader Award to Ted Tohma. Ted was responsible to create Pioneer's OLED business unit back in 1997 and also of producing and marketing the world's first commercial OLED (PMOLED) displays. Ted also prophesied the progression from PMOLED to AMOLED and transitioned Pioneer towards Active Matrix displays.

Ted now consults several organization in the OLED industry. Ted Tohma started it all says Barry Young, Managing Director of the OLED Association.

TDK announced that it sold all its shares in its subsidiary TDK Micro Device Corporation to Futaba Corporation. The two companies dissolved their equity-based business alliance. Back in August 2009, TDK and Futaba established a three-way alliance to develop PMOLED products and market them.

TDK says they want to "selectively focus on business activities". From what we hear they will no longer be involved in OLEDs at all. TDK Micro Device has recently started to produce transparent PMOLED displays and have also shown flexible PMOLED panels which were planned to enter mass production towards the end of 2011.

Nippon Seiki announced a new line-up of 0.8" and 2.7" monochrome energy efficient PMOLED modules. Those new panels offer around 50% energy saving compared to Nippon Seiki's older modules. The green panels have been available since 2010, but now the company added red, white, blue and amber options.

0.8-inch PMOLEDs

The 2.7" panel offers 64x256 resolution (0.26x0.26mm pixel pitch) and 90 nits brightness. The active area is 16.6x66.5 mm.

Remember Mitsubishi's Geo-Cosmos 6-meter PMOLED globe? The company installed this at the Tokyo Science Museum and now they published a beautiful video showing it:

The Geo-Cosmos is a spherical Diamond Vision OLED - which means that it's made out of small PMOLED modules. In fact it uses 10,362 panels (!) - each 96x96mm in size - total resolution is more than 10 million pixels. Each module has 32x32 resolution - and it's made out of 4 smaller sub-modules.

OSD Displays announced two new PMOLED displays. The first is the OSD25664P0909-10, a 3.12" 256x64 monochrome display available in blue, white or yellow. This display offers at least 40,000 hours lifetime (D50). Here's a nice video OSD sent us showing these new displays:

The second PMOLED display announced is a character display. There are two version, 16x2 and 20x2, available in five colors (Green, Amber, White, Blue and Red). They offer 10,000:1 contrast and a wide viewing angle. OSD can embed English, Japanese, European and Russian characters and also offers these with a PCB option similar to that of Standard Monochrome LCD if needed. The operating temperature is -40C to 70C (storage temperature -40C to 85C). Samples of these displays are already shipping.

Yesterday we posted that TDK started to mass produce transparent PMOLEDs, and now we have some technical updates. It turns out that TDK is not using transparent cathodes and anodes: only the anode is transparent, while the cathode is still made of metal. What they did is reduce the line width of the cathode so only a part of the pixel is covered. TDK calls this panel structure "thin-line electrode structure".

This is how they achieved 40% transmittance. This also explains why viewing this display from the back side is impossible (it is not clear - although parts are showing). TDK claims this is good because users will not want other people to view their phone display from the other side.

Update: Here's a nice video showing the Geo-Cosmos OLED globe in action

Mitsubishi Electric installed a new six-meter OLED 'globe' (called "Geo-Cosmos") at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo, Japan. This is the world's first large-scale spherical OLED display and it will be unveiled on June 11. The globe will replace the existing LED globe and will show scenes of clouds and visions of the earth taken from a meteorological satellite.

This is a Diamond Vision OLED - which means that it's made out of small PMOLED modules. In fact it uses 10,362 panels (!) - each 96x96mm in size - total resolution is more than 10 million pixels. Each module has 32x32 resolution - and it's made out of 4 smaller sub-modules (see below). Anyway it's news to us that Mitsubishi developed these smaller modules - previous modules were 384x384mm in size and 128x128 in resolution. Obviously this is useful to make curved or spherical displays.

Update: We've got some new technical details about TDK's transparent panels.

TDK announced that they began to mass produce transparent PMOLED displays. The first display (code: UEL476) offers 2.4", QVGA (240x320) resolution and 40% transmittance. Other technical details: 150 cd/ m2 and a temperature range of -20 to +85 degrees C. TDK says that this display is not easily viewable from the rear - for enhanced security.

Lenovo S-800 phone

This is not very surprising - as we already know that Lenovo's S-800 uses a transparent PMOLED from TDK. So this is just a confirmation that the company indeed moved into mass production.