Patents - Page 15

Apple filed a new patent that describes a fascinating elastic haptics display. The idea is that the screen can not only provide tactile feedback (using vibration, etc.) but change its shape to form real 3D buttons, markings and even maps. Pretty cool.

In order to create such a display, Apple needs a flexible panel - and indeed they specifically mention a flexible OLED panel in the patent. Apple does say that any suitable flexible display panel can be used, for example graphene based display. But it seems that OLED is the most mature technology when it comes to such flexible displays.

Last month we reported that the Korean police is investigating a case of AMOLED technology leaking from Samsung Mobile Display to a "local rival firm". We suspected the rival firm is LG Display, and today this is confirmed. The Korean police announced that they are questioning 10 LG Display employees, all former SMD employees. LGD's stock fell around 5% on the news.

This technology is Samsung's Small Mask Scanning, used to produce AMOLED on large substrates.

We're still waiting for the first Apple OLED product, but in the meantime the company keeps filing OLED related patents. The latest one deals with brightness control on OLED displays. In OLEDs, controlling the brightness isn't straightforward like in LCDs (in which you simply change the brightness of the BLU) - as you control each pixel by itself.

In Apple's new brightness control method, image data will be converted from a "frame buffer encoding" gamma-corrected color space to a logarithmic value. In the logarithmic value, a digital dimming control value may be subtracted rather than divided. This can be converted directly to an analog OLED pixel brightness control signal, without first being converted to a linear digital value. This results in a simple brightness/dimming control - which means it'll be more efficient and requires less hardware.

In Q2 2011 Samsung submitted a patent application that describes devices with flexible displays. This patent is now public, and it shows several concepts: A "pen" type device that has a stretchable screen, a bracelet type device and a book like device that can open up.

According to the patent, all sorts of displays may be used to power such a display: including e-paper, LCd and of course OLEDs. Flexible OLEDs are coming in 2012 from Samsung, but don't expect such bendable displays yet. The 2012 crop will be plastic-based displays that will be shatterproof, light and thin - but not bendable...

Universal Display's CFO (Sidney Rosenblatt) attended Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference 2012 yesterday, and he gave some very interesting updates. First of all, he commented on the recent AUO and Idemitsu Kosan (IK) agreement. According to Sid, IK are not selling emitter materials - they are offering organic materials that go into other layers of the OLED stack. They do not believe the AUO-IK agreement will have any effect of PHOLED sales to AUO, and in fact he tells us that UDC and Idemitsu Kosan are developing OLED materials together for Sony.

Host materials

In their latest earning report of 3Q 2011, UDC announced that they started to offer OLED host materials - and had almost $8 million in revenue from those materials. Today Sidney explained this business a bit further. Host materials are the materials that you put the emitting materials into (Sidney used a metaphor - if the OLED is chocolate milk, then the milk is the host material and the chocolate is the emitter). These materials are considered a commodity, and UDC didn't think to sell those as it's not an interesting market for them.

Update: UDC's CFO gave some comments on this deal - which involves only non-emitter materials and will not effect their red and green PHOLED sales to AUO...

AU Optronics (AUO) and Idemitsu Kosan announced that they will form an OLED strategic alliance - and will collaborate to develop high-performance OLED displays and OLED-related patents. Idemitsu will supply OLED materials to AUO including device structure proposal. AUO committed to reinforce the development of OLED products - both small sized OLED displays for phones and tablets and large sized OLED panels for TVs. The two companies will also study the possibility of collaboration in other fields beside OLEDs.

AUO 32-inch OLED TV prototype

AUO is gearing up towards mass production of 4" - 5" OLED panels in Q2 2012, targeting smartphones. AUO is using LTPS substrates and vapor deposition for the direct-emission RGB OLED sub pixels. AUO will produce these panels in their 3.5-Gen line in Hsinchu, Taiwan. In the second half of 2013, AUO's 4.5-Gen AMOLED Line in Singapore (at AFPD) will start producing panels as well. Towards the end of 2011 AUO unveiled prototypes of Oxide-TFT based 32" OLED TVs, 4" flexible OLEDs and 6" transparent ones.

OLEDWorks signed a patent license agreement with Global OLED Technology, LG's company that holds Kodak's OLED patents. This is a royalty-bearing license that gives the right to use OLED lighting related patents.

OLEDWorks is an OLED lighting panel manufacturer that was established in 2010 by former Kodak OLED business experts. Earlier today the company announced a $61,000 grant to expand their R&D lab in Rochester.

Apple filed a new patent that discusses using an OLED backlighting unit (BLU) for an LCD display. According to the patent filing, an OLED BLU unit may be thinner than a LED BLU and also have an improved light uniformity without using light guides. The BLU may act like a 'one large white pixel', but Apple also discusses the option that it may have several controllable 'areas' which will receive grayscale image information which may be used to modulate the light brightness (like local-dimming in full-array LED panels). Finally Apple says that the BLU will include one or more 'OLED units' bonded between two glass pieces. We're not entirely sure what they mean.

Using an OLED BLU for an LCD display has been discussed before, although it seems that it will not be a very efficient design - if you have a white OLED, why not use color-filters and not an LCD at all? This is the architecture that LG Display proposes for its upcoming OLED TVs.

Universal Display reported their 3Q 2011 financial results: net income (and cash flow) of $6 million (this is the first profitable quarter for the company) on revenues of $21.8 million (an increase of 208% compared to 3Q 2010). Commercial revenue was $9.9 million and development revenue was $11.9 million.

Host Materials

UDC has started to offer OLED host materials to complement their emitter materials. They enjoyed high host material sales in this quarter ($7.8 million) - but this is a competitive market as several companies are offering the same kind of materials. The company said that they are looking to "expand the R&D and material business outside of emitters and to other aspects of the stack". Back in March when UDC raised $250 million it was rumored that the company is looking to acquire a company (Novaled was the leading candidate according to the rumors) to expand their business in that way.

There are reports that Universal Display's key PHOLED patent's key claims has been invalidated and revoked in an Oral Proceeding of the European patent office. According to the report UDC will have to submit a much narrower patent - deleting any references to any phosphorescent materials other than iridium. The opposition to the patent was filed by Merck, BASF, and Sumation.

UDC responded to this story: "The European Patent Office conducted an oral hearing on November 3rd. The EPO panel announced its decision to maintain the patent with claims directed to OLEDs containing phosphorescent organo-metalic iridium compounds. A transcript of this hearing will be available in two weeks. UDC's earning reports will be released tomorrow and hopefully we'll learn more about this issue.