Phosphorescent - Page 20

Universal Display announced it will supply phosphorescent OLED materials to the Fraunhofer Institute which will use them to make efficient white OLED lighting panels. The two companies signed a two-year agreement under which COMEDD will develop and produce OLED panels "for market development". The upcoming panels will use UDC's all-phosphorescent solution.

The Fraunhofer is already producing and shipping OLED lighting panels, including structured and transparent ones (we posted our on-hands review just yesterday). The Fraunhofer does not plan to mass produce their panels, they are just meant to help interested people experiment with this exciting new technology. Of course in the future the Fraunhofer may license or spin-off its production technology.

Lumiotec released an interesting article that discusses the company's Multi-Photon Emission (MPE) stacked device structure and how it helps to achieve high luminance and long lifetime, their light out-coupling and encapsulation technologies and the company's mass production process. The paper also includes a discussion on the development of their next generation panel which uses phosphorescent materials provided by Universal Display Corporation to improve the efficiency.

Here's our own review of Lumiotec's Hanger and Vanity OLED lamps, and here's our review of the company's first-gen OLED lighting panel. Here are a couple of videos showing Lumiotec's panels and lamps:

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.

Universal Display and Acuity Brands presented advances in their stripes white OLED architecture project. A stripes OLED is made from thin stripes of red, green and blue OLEDs. When you put a diffuser panel on top, it appears white. The stripes architectural results in efficient panels, that are also color tunable (2500-4000K).

UDC reports that the project is proceeding well - and in fact the pixel performance exceeds the project's goal. They fabricated the first 15x15 cm panel samples already and both companies are on target to deliver the actual luminaries in 2012 (which are based on the same design as the Kindred and the Revel - the lamps that use LG Chem's OLED panels). UDC is also working to further optimize the panel's performance.

We just got word from LG Chem that the company finished development of their first OLED lighting panel, and have started mass production. The "type 1" panel, or the LG-OLED-041 is a 100x100 mm square panel that features 4,000K, CRI>80, 45 lm/W and 10,000 hours lifetime (LT70) at 3,000 nits. The active emitting panel is 90x90 mm, and the whole panel is 2.44 mm thick (including the optical film and PCB. The OLED itself is 1.84 mm).

LG Chem is already developing the 2nd generation (or "type 2") panel which will up the efficiency to 60 lm/W and the lifetime to 15,000 hours. The size will be the same, but the color will be 3,500K. LG Chem will start mass production of type 2 panels in 2Q 2012. LG Chem further says that it decided to offer these new panels at "lower prices" - although we do not know the actual price yet.

Lumiotec signed a new OLED technology license agreement with Universal Display - and will integrate UDC's technology and materials into their OLED lighting products. Lumiotec will pay license fees and running royalties to UDC, and the term of the agreement runs through December 31, 2015.

Lumiotec OLED lamps

Lumiotec says that they will start delivering sample panels next month (February 2012) - mainly 145x145 mm square panels - with warm white color and 40 lm/W efficiency. The company will start mass production these panels by April. Lumiotec also says that they are developing high-efficient natural white panels - and these will be released sometime during 2012.

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.

Prof. Daisuke Yokoyama from the Yamagata University in Japan published an interesting research paper about molecular orientation in small-molecule OLEDs. Daisuke says that orienting the molecules horizontally has two positive effects: the light outcoupling efficiency is increased (by around 50% compared to randomly oriented emitters) and the charge transport between molecules becomes more efficient (which can lead to a lower driving voltage).

Daisuke tells us that some materials in commercial OLEDs are already horizontally oriented - but not all. He claims that most phosphorescent emitters are not horizontally oriented yet. If so, we can expect good performance increases once these materials are oriented.

Researchers from the University of Toronto developed the world's most efficient OLED on plastic, which they say is comparable with the best glass-based OLEDs. They discovered that coating the plastic substrate with a 50-100 nano-meter thick layer of tantalum(V) oxide (Ta2O5), an advanced optical thin-film coating material enabled them to re-construct the high-refractive index property previously limited to heavy metal-doped glass:

The researchers say that to create a high-efficiency OLED you need a high-refractive-index (n 10,000 cd/m².