Professor Vivian Yam from Hong Kong University explains the University's research into efficient phosphorescent OLED materials. Professor Yam is investigating intermolecular interactions and the range of colors those materials can produce. They are also researching OPV panels.
The German OLED project So-Light has been successfully completed. This 3.5 years, â¬14.7 million project (funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research) addressed the complete value chain, from primary OLED materials through to OLED-lighting applications.
During Google's financial results conference call, the company's CEO Larry Page discussed the opportunities in mobile phones. The company bought Motorola Mobility and is expected to release new phones with new technology soon. Page hinted at unbreakable phones ("when you drop your phone, it shouldn't go splat") and said that battery life is still a huge issue. Hopefully Motorola will indeed incorporate unbreakable plastic-based OLED panels in their upcoming device (some say it'll be called Google X).
Curved YOUM prototype phone
Motorola already uses OLED panels in several of their mobile phones, including the relatively new RAZR i, RAZR HD and RAZR M. Most of these Motorola's OLED phone sport Super AMOLED Advanced displays, which are 25% more power efficient compared to other OLEDs (according to Motorola's marketing, anyway). This is probably due to the fact that Motorola's displays are one of the few Samsung OLEDs that use green phosphorescent emitters, and may be the reasoning behind Page's "battery life" comment.
Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting (PIOL) unveiled new OLED lighting panels and also revealed the company's roadmap till 2018. The company currently produces 100x100 mm panels, and they are now showing new 150x50 mm and 200x50 mm panels that will be released in the spring of 2013.
The new panels will offer the same performance as PIOL's current panels: 10,000 lifetime (LT70), 30 lm/W and color temperatures of 3000K, 4000K and 5000K. PIOL confirmed that the only difference to the current panels is the shape. PIOL's panels have a high CRI (over 90) and they mostly target museums and exhibitions (some of the panels have already been used in at least two museums: Kyoto's MOMAK museum and Panasonic's own Shiodome museum).
Universal Display's CFO, Sidney Rosenblatt, participated in an investor conference (the 15th Annual Needham Growth Conference, January 15). This was an interesting presentation. Sidney confirmed that Samsung's next AMOLED products will include the company's green PHOLED material (and probably the host too), which will make them more efficient (by 25%). The new products will be released in Q1 or Q2 2013. According to reports, this will be the Full-HD 4.99" 440PPI display prototype shown at CES.
Regarding Samsung's flexible display program, Sidney says that Samsung is still using LTPS. The production process is too hot for the plastic substrate (it will melt) and so the LTPS transistors are deposited on glass and the glass is later delaminated. The encapsulation technology is Vitex's multi-layer technology which is very slow (the panel has to enter the evaporation chamber 6 times). All this means that plastic displays will be more expensive than glass ones.
As was reported before, Samsung has unveiled a 4.99" Full HD AMOLED panel (440PPI). This panel will go into production in Q1 2013, and will probably be used in their upcoming Galaxy S4 flagship phone:
Samsung managed to achieve such a high pixel density using a modified FMM technology. According to Anandtech, Samsung also adopted a new material that makes these AMOLEDs 25% more efficient. This means that Samsung finally adopted UDC's green PHOLED materials in the new panels.
Global OLED Technology (GOT) have won two key patent challenges in Europe (defending oppositions from Merck). GOT says this is significant for GOT and demonstrates that they will aggressively defend their patent rights throughout the world.
The first patent was EP 1730249, which details the use of certain anthracenes as non-emitting hosts in the light-emitting layers of OLED devices. The second patent is EP 1828342, which details the use of hole-transporting material adjacent to the phosphorescent light emitting layer. Both of these technologies enable high efficiency and long lifetime in OLEDs for both display and lighting applications.
Universal Display announced that they have extended their commercial supply agreement with LG Display - till October 31, 2013 (this agreement will automatically renew for additional twelve month periods, unless terminated). LGD is using UDC's PHOLED materials in AMOLED displays, and pay them for the chemical sales and a license fee (LGD has some small scale small-panel production, but their main OLED focus is on large panels for TVs).
UDC signed the original agreement with LGD (then LG.Philips) back in May 2007. In August 2011 they signed a long-term agreement with Samsung, and they probably will sign a similar with LG Display too, but LGD will most likely wait till they mass produce OLED panels (for their 55" OLED TVs).
OSRAM is presenting a new luminaire (called the Rollercoaster) that features transparent OLED panels. OSRAM says that they have made some significant advances and they now plan to start series-production of such panels in 2014.
The Rollercoaster looks like a glass and metal sculpture when turned-off and has a mobius-form (and so looks like a rollercoaster). It has 30 rectangular OLED panels, each with an active area of 18x6.5 cm. The OLEDs feature an efficiency of 20 lm /W and a transparency of 57% (which they say is the highest yet for such large panels. Fraunhofer's TABOLA transparent panels, which we reviewed back in April feature 45% transparency).
Update: Kyushu University published an interesting video with more details about this new technology
Researchers from Japan's Kyushu University developed new efficient rare-metal free OLED emitter materials based on dicyanobenzene derivatives. They say that these new materials (which they call hyperfluorescence) are as efficient as phosphorescent OLEDs, but are cheaper (about 1/10th of the cost) because they do not require rare metals.
The researchers say that they are now seeking to collaborate with Japanese makers to commercialize this technology "at an early date". They already created some display prototypes with the new materials (see photo above).
