Patents - Page 6

Universal Display announced that it has signed long-term OLED agreements with BOE Technology Group. Under these agreements, UDC will supply phosphorescent OLED materials to BOE. UDC and BOE signed their first agreement in 2014 and it is great to see these evolve into long-term agreements.

BOE started to produce flexible OLED displays at its Chengdu B7 6-Gen fab in October 2017. BOE's B7 fab is the company's first flexible AMOLED line and actual real mass production will probably begin at about Q1 2018. The full capacity is 48,000 substrates per month, but this will only be achieved in the first half of 2019.

OLED ink-jet developer Kateeva made several interesting updates regarding its OLED Ink Jet printing technologies. First up, the company formally introduced its inkjet equipment for large-area RGB OLED emitter deposition. Kateeva brands its new line as YIELDJet Explore and these systems are targeted for R&D lines and pilot lines.

Kateeva offers two systems, the Explore, which is used for early development and small panels (up to 200 mm substrates) and the Explore Pro which can be used to produce panels up to 55" in size (this is still a development/pilot system, though). Kateeva announced that it has shipped four Explore systems in 2017, and it expects to ship three additional systems by Q2 2018.

The phosphorescent OLED emitter market is currently dominated by Universal Display who owns the basic patents to phosphorescent OLED emitters. All the major OLED makers (including Samsung and LGD) are using UDC's materials in order to achieve higher display efficiencies, beyond what is available from fluorescent emitters.

Universal Display holds over 4,000 issued and pending patents, but some of its basic phosphorescent patents are set to expire by the end of 2017. Honestly, it is very difficult to know exactly what effect this will have on the market - some analysts believe that it will carry very little effect while others say that this will open the door for other companies to sell competing phosphorescent emitters.

Idemitsu Kosan and LG Chem announced a new collaboration agreement that will allow both companies to use each other OLED material-related patents in certain areas.

Idemitsu and LG Chem hope that this collaboration and patent sharing agreement will accelerate the development of new high-performance OLED materials. Through this cooperative arrangement, both companies will strongly support the OLED business of LG Display - but will also offer the outcome of this collaboration to other display companies.

Universal Display was recently awarded a new patent (USPTO #20170186976) that describes high electroluminescent efficiency TADF OLED emitter and host materials based on benzotriazoles.

It is very interesting to see UDC developing TADF material. The company is focused on phosphorescent based OLEDs but, as they explain in the patent application, "phosphorescent materials generally contain a rare metal element such as Ir or Pt. These metals are rather expensive and are dependent on limited global resources". TADF could also be a viable route towards an efficient blue emitter (blue-emission is specifically mentioned in UDC's new patent).

Dr. Andreas Haldi was appointed as CYNORA's Chief Marketing Office in 2016. CYNORA develops efficient blue TADF OLED emitters, and Dr. Haldi was kind enough to participate in this interview and help us understand CYNORA's business and technology.

Q: Thank you Andreas for helping us understand CYNORA's business and technology better. CYNORA has set up on a focused mission to develop a commercial blue TADF emitter. What will you consider to be a market-ready material, in terms of lifetime, efficiency and color point?

For the last 5 years, CYNORA has worked on developing thermally activated delayed fluorescent (TADF) OLED emitters. End of 2015 we started to focus on efficient blue materials, which are still a key issue for OLED displays. Compared to the red and green pixels, the blue pixel is much less efficient. An increased efficiency of the blue pixel would therefore significantly reduce the power consumption of the display.

Universal Display was granted a new patent that describes a novel hybrid MEMS display that uses patterned red, blue and yellow sub pixels combined with a MEMS-LED display.

The idea here that the whole display sits on top of a blue-emitting edge-lit LED structure. The blue light only goes through small subpixel-sized "holes" which are controlled using tiny MEMS shutters. A blue LED is much more efficient and long lasting than a blue OLED, so the idea here is to combine the efficient red, green and yellow phosphorescent OLEDs with the efficient blue LED.

Universal Display signed a five-year OLED Technology License Agreement and Supplemental Material Purchase Agreement with Tianma Micro-electronics. Under the license agreement, UDC granted Tianma non-exclusive license rights to manufacture and sell OLED display products based on its IPs. UDC will also supply phosphorescent OLED materials to Tianma.

Tianma is currently producing AMOLED displays in low volume in its 5.5-Gen pilot fab in Shanghai (our own sources say that these displays are not commercial yet but will be so by the end of 2016). In May 2016 the company demonstrated flexible and rigid OLED prototypes, including a 5.5" 702p (270 PPI) flexible OLED prototype with a bending radius of 20 mm.

Universal Display announced that it acquired BASF's entire OLED IP portfolio, for 87 Euro million (about $96 million). BASF's IP portfolio, representing 15 years of R&D, includes over 500 issues and pending patents around the world in 86 patent families - mostly regarding phosphorescent OLED materials and technologies. BASF’s OLED portfolio has an average lifetime of 10 years.

UDC says that BASF's patents will help the company develop and deliver an all-phosphorescent emissive stack. Specifically, UDC is believing that this will help the company develop commercial blue emissive systems. Including the new BASF patents, UDC will have over 4,000 issued and pending patents

IGNIS Innovation announced that it has signed a non-exclusive patent license agreement with LG Display. Ignis will provide LGD with access to its circuit technology to enhance the performance of OLED displays.

CSOT 5.5-inch MaxLife AMOLED prototype

Ignis Innovation developed several OLED circuit technologies. It's basic technology involves OLED compensation, both external and internal - which can improve the power consumption and lifetime of OLED displays. The technology should also increase production yields and enhance the picture uniformity and stability.