Phosphorescent - Page 11

Taiwan's ITRI research institute developed a long-lasting OLED blue emitter. The researchers used a green phosphorescent emitter with a new double metal structure - that emits a blue light. The so-called Plasmon-Coupled Organic Light Emitting Diode (PCOLED) structure's lasts 27 times as long as a blue fluorescent emitter.

The researchers explain that a regular green phosphorescent emitter always emits a very weak emission. By using the double-metal structure, more plasmons are generated which means a larger blue emission. This is not an up-conversion process - but merely a change in conditions within the green material. This condition was actually discovered by accident.

Researchers at the University of Michigan developed a new deep-blue energy-efficient phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) emitter. The researchers say that this is the brightest deep-blue PHOLED ever reported - in fact it is about 10 times brighter than previous deep-blue PHOLEDs. The lifetime of this material is still very low, and future research will attempt to stabilize the molecule.

The new emitter is based on a N-heterocyclic carbene iridium-III complex molecule. This is an efficient compound because its design reduces the chances that light-emitting excitons will either get lost as heat or destroy the compound itself. This research is sponsored by Universal Display Corporation and the U.S. Air Force.

Universal Display reported their financial results for Q2 2015. UDC generated $58.1 in revenues (down from $64.1 million in Q2 2014) and saw a net loss of $11.8 million (due to a $33 million green host inventory write-down).

Material sales were $24.3 million (down 32% from Q2 2014) and royalties and license fees were $33.7 million (up from $28.1 million in Q2 2014) - out of which SDC paid $30 million. Excluding the inventory write-down, operating income was $28.5 million and the company generated $28.2 million in the quarter and now has $356.2 million in cash and equivalents.

Researchers from Korea's Ulsan Institute of Technology announced that they have developed a new technique that can improve the efficiency of Iridium-doped phosphorescent emitters by more than 30 times.

The team explained that this dramatic increase in efficiency was achieved by a new method to synthesize molecules - which resulted in "stronger" molecules. More precisely, the researchers created an emitter molecule in which the two carborane units were thethered by an alkylene linker.

This is a guest post by SCM's business developer Fedor Goumans

To further improve the efficiency and life-time of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), ultimately the properties of underlying materials need to be tweaked at the molecular level. In materials science, as in other fields, modeling has become a more wide-spread tool integrated with experiments for a holistic research & development approach.

In particular, high-throughput screening computational screening may considerably reduce experimental costs for synthesizing and testing new materials. At the molecular level there are a few properties that are important for OLED life-time and efficiency. A simplified set up for an OLED device is depicted in Figure 1. The charge mobility and light emission properties can be predicted with computational chemistry, as explained below.

A few days ago, the US Energy Department (DoE) announced its tenth round of efficient SSL lighting awards, awarding more than $8.2 million to nine projects. Today the DoE released more details about the projects it awarded in this round. There are four OLED projects, awarded a total of $3.8 million.

Acuity Brands received $455,131 to develop an OLED Luminaire with integrated DC current drivers in each panel and advanced controls. The goal is to demonstrate a luminaire with an efficacy of 65 lm/W and a luminous output of 4,000 lumens.

In August 2011 Samsung signed a long-term license agreement with Universal Display. This agreement (which runs till 2017, and will probably be extended) included a license fee and allowed Samsung to acquire and use UDC's patented phosphorescent OLED materials.

In total, Samsung is set to pay (and already paid) UDC hundreds of million of dollars in royalties and materials. This got me wondering - why didn't Samsung acquire UDC back then, which would have given them a lock on the OLED market? Let's look at the numbers, but the answer is probably not related to the financials, really.

The European Commission, under its Horizon 2020 programme, launched a new project called Phebe that aims to develop and commercialize TADF OLED emitters. This three-year project's consortium includes Novaled, Astron-FIAMM, TU Dresden, Kaunas University of Technology, Durham University and other companies and universities.

TU Dresden is focusing on material design using theoretical quantum chemical approaches, and KTU is elaborating synthetic schemes for exciplex emitters and intramolecular charge transfer materials and synthesizing the most promising compounds. Durham will perform photophysical characterisation of the new materials from Kaunus and will also be in charge of elucidating the mechanisms of TADF to feed into the theoretical work of TU Dresden. Novaled will provide best-fit transport and doping material sets, technology and expert know-how on stack architecture.

UBI Research estimates that the OLED emitting material market will grow to $560 million USD in 2015, a 16% growth from 2014. UBI says that the market will grow by 35% CAGR in coming years, to reach $2.5 billion in 2020.

Korea currently buys over 90% of OLED materials, but China's new players are starting to produce AMOLED displays and China will gain a market share of over 20%.

Japan-based Ason Technology unveiled their first OLED lighting panel in 2013, and last year we featured an article discussing the company's technology and business. In a recent interview to Sangyo-Times, the company's CEO reveals some interesting updates.

Ason spent almost eight years to develop a new multi-stack structure that can be used to create OLED with many layers, which results in long-lasting high-brightness panels. The company now reports that it developed an OLED with twelve (!) emitting layers, which enables it to reach a high brightness of 50,000 cd/m².