TADF OLED emitters, introduction and market status - Page 14

Reseachers from the Universities of Bonn, Regensburg, Utah and the MIT developed a new method to make triplets radiate directly in OLEDs rather than harvesting the triplets by reverse intersystem crossing to generate delayed fluorescence. Basically this means they enabled phosphorescence OLEDs without any heavy atoms at room temperature.

The researchers created new emitter molecules that can store electrical energy for significantly longer than is conventionally assumed. This means that these molecules can exploit the spontaneous jumps in spin orientation in order to generate light - so the energy that is lost as heat in regular fluorescent OLEDs is released as light in those molecules.

Cynora and the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT) launched a new project called cyFLEX that aims to develop develop flexible and luminescent surfaces for smart packaging and advertising applications based on OLED lighting panels. The project follows-up to Cynora's cyFLEX panel demonstration shown in October 2012 and uses the company's solution-processable copper-based TADF OLED emitters.

Cynora will develop OLED materials that can be applied for mass-market applications - integrated into packaging. They hope to develop a low-cost, efficient manufacturing process based on printing and coating.

Cynora is a German startup established in 2003 that developed copper-based OLED emitter systems. In October 2012 the company unveiled a mostly-solution-based flexible OLED prototype, developed in collaboration with InnovationLab. Last month Germany’s BMBF launched the cyCESH project which aims to develop soluble (printable) materials for low-cost high efficiency OLED lighting devices. Cynora is the leader of the consortium in this €6 million project, together with Novaled and the University of Regensburg.

Cynora's technology is interesting and the company's CEO Dr. Tobias Grab and the company's Business Development manager, Dr. Mathias Mydlak, were kind enough to provide the information for this article explaining the company's technology.

Cynora, Novaled and the University of Regensburg will co-develop new soluble (printable) materials for low-cost high efficiency OLED lighting devices. This new project, called cyCESH is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with €6.1 million.

Professor Yersin's group a the University of Regensburg will handle material development while Cynora will handle subsequent synthesis and optimization. Novaled will be in handle the application of solution-based-processed, doped transport layers. These three partners form a complete comprehensive partnership for OLED applications.

In December 2012 we posted about Japan's Kyushu University new rare-metal free fluorescent OLED emitter materials that achieve 100% emission efficiency. Now the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) released a new video featuring Kyushu's professor Chihaya Adachi. Following a rather long introduction into his lab and his own biography, professor Adachi explains their thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) technology (also called hyperfluorescence).

Adachi says that are seeking a commercialization partner, and they still need to study the degradation mechanism and expand the emission spectrum. Towards the end of this video you can view a couple of prototype monochrome (green) panels that use their new emitters.

Update: Kyushu University published an interesting video with more details about this new technology

Researchers from Japan's Kyushu University developed new efficient rare-metal free OLED emitter materials based on dicyanobenzene derivatives. They say that these new materials (which they call hyperfluorescence) are as efficient as phosphorescent OLEDs, but are cheaper (about 1/10th of the cost) because they do not require rare metals.

The researchers say that they are now seeking to collaborate with Japanese makers to commercialize this technology "at an early date". They already created some display prototypes with the new materials (see photo above).