OLED-Info interviews

Display Week 2024 was a busy and exciting event for Kateeva. CEO Bin Liu was on site at our US HQ in Newark, California. At the SID show in San Jose, he met with customers to get a flavor of the latest display technology innovations that will inform our product roadmap.

Bin Liu, CEO, Kateeva

One of the highlights at SID week was a celebration of Kateeva’s CTO Emeritus, Steve Van Slyke. Steve and Ching Wan Tang received the Karl Ferdinand Braun Award for their co-invention of the OLED device. The accolade is the highest honor conferred by the Society for Information Display. It recognizes “outstanding technical achievement in, or contribution to, the display industry”.

Since becoming CEO in late 2022, Bin and the leadership team have implemented a new vision for Kateeva. He will share the details in a keynote talk at Display Innovation China in Shanghai, this week (July 3-5).

US-based Pixelligent is an advanced materials company that delivers next generation optical materials applications in lighting and displays. For the OLED industry, Pixelligent offers materials that significantly increase light output by increasing the refractive index of materials in the device.

Pixelligent's President and CEO, Craig Bandes, was kind enough to answe a few questions we had, to learn more about Pixelligent and its solutions for the OLED industry.

Hello Craig! Can you explain your technology and materials and how they enhance the efficiency of OLED display?

We are best known for our high refractive index (HRI) nanocrystal formulations and dispersions that deliver breakthrough performance in next-generation electronics, like extended reality, displays, optics, and sensors. We designed our PixJet®, PixNIL®, and PixClear® products to offer the best combination of brightness, clarity, operating efficiencies, and device-lifetime. 

Merck KGaA is a pioneer in high performance OLED material development, supplying a range of materials for AMOLED makers since the industry’s inception.

To learn more about Merck’s materials and views on the OLED industry, we conducted an interview with Dr. Georg Bernatz, Merck Electronics’ Global Head of OLED Technical Marketing. Georg Bernatz has received a PhD in Physics from the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany in 2000. In 2004, Georg joined Merck, where, over the years, he worked in various functions and on various topics in the field of Liquid Crystals for displays. In 2018, Georg changed to OLED, leading OLED Physics Product Research, and in 2020 he became responsible for all Physics & Application Labs in Darmstadt for Display materials. Since October 2023, Georg is heading Merck’s Global Technical Marketing for OLED materials.

Hello Dr. Bernatz. Can you bring us up to date quickly on Merck's current OLED material products? What do you offer to OLED display makers?

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is very active in the design, development and production of a broad variety of high performing OLED materials, with a strong focus on hole and electron transport materials (HTM, ETM), host materials for phosphorescent emitters as well as activities in the field of high efficiency blue.

Notion Systems, a leader in ink jet printing for industrial applications, has been active in the display market for a long time. The company is now promoting its EHD technology for high precision printing. Here’s an interview we conducted with Antonio Schmidt – SVP Sales & Business Development and Jochen Seeser – Senior Process Development Manager, Notion Systems.

Hello Antonio and Jochen, thank you for your time. In 2022, you started offering EHD printing systems. Can you explain how this technology works and what applications does it enable in the display industry?

Notion Systems has been active in the display market since 2016, when we delivered an n.jet display for pixel printing to a lab of a leading display manufacturer in China. Since then, we have supplied several inkjet displays for RGB printing and encapsulation to various R&D and production sites in China and Taiwan. I think we can also claim that we are the only manufacturer, along with perhaps one other U.S. competitor, that has multiple systems in operation for 24x7 display production.

Jeff Yurek is a former creative professional turned marketer passionate about storytelling and technology. He is currently Vice President of Marketing at Nanosys, Inc. in Silicon Valley, Calif., and serves as the Vice Chair of Marketing for the Society for Information Display. Here's an interview we conducted with Jeff towards Display Week 2023.

Hello Jeff! Can you tell us what to expect from SID Display Week 2023? 

Display Week is the best place to experience and learn about cutting-edge display technologies and applications. The program for Display Week 2023 is packed as always with valuable courses, technical talks, business presentations, and amazing technology demos.

This is a sponsored post by Amorphyx, where display industry consultant Ian Hendy has interviewed Amorphyx's CEO John Brewer

Q: Can you start by telling us a little about what Amorphyx does, John?

Amorphyx has several fundamentally new technology platforms that provide for TFT performance improvements in three areas: (1) Switching speeds, with options to move to the Tera-Hz range ultimately, (2) Power, where the IGZO AMeTFT can achieve even lower power performance than today’s LTPO OLED Pro Motion displays and better refresh range, and (3) Small transistor size.

Our technology platforms are lower cost than the alternatives, and move from amorphous and crystalline semiconductor approaches, to devices based on different effects that do not have a semiconductor at all, yet can still drive a display, drive current, deliver grey scale and switch very fast. Or they can operate a flex IC at higher clock speeds than known today.

For now, our main commercial focus is on IGZO AMeTFT which is fundamentally a potential replacement transistor for LTPS or LTPO used in modern OLED phones and has the capability to replace more highly compensated LTPO circuits in modern Smartphone displays due to enhanced stability.

Poland is aiming to become a major innovation and high-tech hub, and the country is already enjoying a growing industry, focusing on IT, bio-technology, robotics and nanotechnology.

Poland has a strong material science and development expertise, and in recent years we have been seeing OLED and display-related ventures out of Poland. It seems Poland is poised to become an interesting location to watch for future innovation in the OLED industry.

Ergis Group noDiffusion OLED encapsulation film

One such company is the Poland-based Ergis Group, a leader in plastic processing active in markets such as food packaging, industrial, automotive, medical and more. In 2020, Ergis launched its first product for the optoelectronic applications (such as the display market and photovoltaics) - the Ergis noDiffusion films for flexible OLED panels (both displays and lighting) and OPVs. Ergis is using a unique ALD-based technology that enables it to offer high performance films on low cost PET films.

The Looking Glass Factory develops interfaces for holographic, light field displays. Light field displays seem to be advancing, and we invited LGF's CEO and co-founder, Shawn Frayne, to help us understand the technology and to tell us more about the company, its technologies and latest status.

Q: Hello Shawn. Can you give us a short background on LGF, and on your own interest in light field displays?

Ever since I saw the holographic shark swallow up Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, I have been pursuing the dream of the hologram a way to create and share images and memories that are as lifelike as people and things in the real world. However, despite living in a 3D universe, our digital interactions, memories and creations remain trapped on flat, 2D screens. I wanted to change that, and that’s how and why Looking Glass Factory started.

Notion Systems is a leading supplier of industrial ink jet printing systems. The n.jet inkjet platform from Notion Systems is used to produce printed circuit boards, OLED & QLED displays, sensors and high-quality 3D parts.

We present the following interview with the Company's CEO and founder, Dr. Michael Doran.

Q: Hello Michael. Can you detail notion systems' offering for the OLED industry? We understand you offer R&D and production systems, for both RBG printing and TFE printing.

Notion Systems offers a system platform called n.jet display series that prints functional layers at various steps of display production and for a range of display technologies. These include rigid, flexible, OLED, QLED and micro displays. The platform meets the most stringent requirements for process environment and process stability.

Canada-based OTI Lumionics developed innovative OLED materials and technologies. In August 2020 the company announced that it will start shipping its 2nd-gen ConducTorr Cathode Patterning Materials (CPM) by the end of 2020 to customers, which will use these to create OLED displays with under-the-display camera and face unlock technologies.

We had a short talk with the company's founder and CEO, Dr. Michael G. Helander, during which we discussed the company's technology, status and future plans.