Phosphorescent - Page 14

Konica Minolta developed the world's most efficient OLED lighting panel - at 131 lm/W. The panel's emitting area is 15 square centimeters. KM says that now OLEDs are actually more efficient than consumer LEDs, and this is a major step forward for OLED lighting. We do not know the lifetime or any other features of this panel.

KM's previous panel featured 103 lm/W and the company incorporated three new technologies in the new panel that enabled them to reach the record efficiency. First up is a new phosphorescent blue material that improved the internal quantum efficiency. In addition, KM also implemented a new light extraction technology and a new "organic layer construction technique", based on optical simulation.

Universal Display reported their financial results for Q4 2013. Revenues were $49.5 million (including $20 million in license fees from SDC). Total 2013 revenues were $146.6 million (up 75% from 2012). UDC ended 2013 with $273 million in cash, up from $244 in the end of 2012.

UDC also issued a guidance for 2014 - $190 to $205 million. SDC's royalty fees will be $50 million in 2014 (up from $40 in 2013). They expect most of the growth from 2013 to be in the second half of the year - due to capacity increase at SDC and LGD's Gen-8 OLED TV fab.

Universal Display signed a collaboration and evaluation agreement with Philips' OLED lighting unit, under which UDC will start supplying Philips with sample PHOLED materials.

Philips is already using PHOLED materials when producing the Lumiblade Plus panel, but this 45 lm/W panel was designed by Konica Minolta and Philips is only the producer. The G350 Gen 2 OLED panel is probably also using phosphorescent materials (as it achieved 45 lm/W) but perhaps this too uses KM's design. Philips expects the G350 Gen3 to achieve 55 lm/W, so probably the new PHOLED materials will go into that panel in 2014.

Universal Display announced that the European Patent Office (EPO) revoked one of the company's basic phosphorescent OLED patents, EPO #1449238. The opposing parties included Sumitomo Chemical, Merck and BASF. This is one of more than 60 patents issued worldwide that cover four early fundamental phosphorescent OLED inventions developed at Princeton University and the University of Southern California.

UDC's CEO, Steven Abramson, said that they believe the EPO's decision is erroneous and they may file a petition to review the matter. In addition, UDC has a pending divisional EP patent application in which it intends to pursue substantial patent coverage that is similar to that provided in related patents that have previously been issued in the other jurisdictions. In any case, the company believes that any one decision in any one jurisdiction will not have a material effect on their business.

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.

Ason Technology was established in 2006 in Japan to develop OLED lighting technologies. The company finally unveiled their first OLED lighting panel during the FPD International 2013 exhibition last month.

Ason's panel use Multi-Photo-Emission (MPE), which is a stacked emitter architecture, which is also used by Lumiotec. Usually MPE panels use about 3 layers, but Ason managed to stack 10 or more emitting layers which enables them to reach a very high brightness and CRI. Ason also developed their own diffusion reflection layer so that the emitted color does not change even when viewed from different angles.

Universal Display announced their financial results for Q3 2013 - $32.8 in revenues (up from $12.5 in Q2 2012) and a net income of $5.5 million. Those excellent results are "directly attributable to the commercial adoption of its red emitter, green emitter and green host materials".

Looking forward, UDC says that the "OLED industry is poised for robust growth as product roadmaps are further developed, new manufacturing capacity ramps and new display and lighting manufacturers enter the market". They raised their guidance for 2013 revenues to be $142-$144 million (the previous estimate was $110-$125 million).

Updated: This story had some inaccuracies and is now updated with new information from First-O-Lite

China's First-O-Lite says they developed an efficient (111.7 lm/W at 1,000 cd/m²) hybrid OLED lighting device (2 cm²). This is a hybrid device that uses a fluorescent blue emitter along with red and blue phosphorescent emitters. The company says that this is probably the most efficient hybrid OLED device ever produced that can meet the Energy Star color requirements.

First-O-Lite has established a volume production fab and will soon start producing OLED panels. These will feature over 55 lm/W (at 3,000 cd/m²) and will use the company's external light extraction technology.

Universal Display announced that the European Patent Office (EPO) issued a decision regarding the company's EU patent #1933395 (the EP '395 patent, which details the iridium L2MX composition), which was challenged by Sumitomo Chemical, Merck and BASF. The EPO affirmed the basic inventions and broad patent coverage but narrowed the scope of the original claims.

I'm not a lawyer so it is difficult for me to understand exactly what the narrowing of those claims mean. UDC says that they are pleased with the fact that the EPO recognized the novelty in the invention and confirmed their rights to broad claim coverage in this class of molecules through 2020. They are likely to appeal the ruling to reinstate a broader set of claims.

BASF has been working on a blue phosphorescent OLED emitter for quite some time - in fact the company says they have started developing an iridium-based blue PHOLED as early in 2003. Now Karl Hahn, a senior VP at BASF, says that the company will be ready to launch a commercial blue phosphorescent emitter by the end of 2014 aimed towards OLED lighting panels.

During the same presentation, Karl Hahn said that BASF plans to open a new OLED display focused laboratory in Korea during 2014.