Plastic - Page 11

PolyPhotonix, a UK based OLED-lighting startup is building its first production line. They want to make 3M efficient OLED panels with high yields. They say their main markets are automotive and architectual lighting. In fact they got their first funding through a project called MENDIP, in which Sanko Gosei (a Japanese car interior maker) is another partner.

The production line will make the OLEDs on 200x200m glass substrates, at least initially. Later perhaps they will use flexible plastic substrates.

After receiving investments totaling billions of dollars over the past decade, the OLED industry is finally poised to take off. According to NanoMarkets, an industry analyst firm based here, the markets for OLED materials will reach $2.7 billion by 2015.

Demonstrating an OLED TV just 0.3mm thick at the D: All Things Digital event, Stringer said: it’s a glass, we can produce this in plastic and you can wrap it around your arm, we’re not quite sure why you would want to. We’re looking for applications for the next generation of the plastic version but this will come out in a 27-inch version fairly soon. Within the next 12 months, we haven’t given a date.

In April 2008, we had the chance of interviewing Mary Kilitziraki, Fast2Light's project manager. Fast2Light is an integrated (9 companies, 3 research institutes and 2 universities) R&D project that aims to research and develop light emitting foils based on OLED tech.

Q: What are the major goals of the Fast2Light project? What will you consider to be a big success in the project?

Fast2Light aims to lay the foundations for marrying large-area roll-to-roll technologies with the field of organic electroluminescence, for all necessary layers in an OLED device on foil. We aim to set in place all the experimental platforms that when integrated will produce a high quality lighting foil. Yet, these technology platforms can be used in other electronic devices. We will indeed think ourselves as successful if we develop and master the new large-area processes and demonstrate these in a 30cmx30cm lighting foil in 3 years time. But equally important, one of the successes of the project will be the exploitation of our results, on platform level, in other fields of electronic devices.

OLED-T today announced the launch of its low temperature organic electron injector material EI-111-2Me. OLED displays are manufactured from a sandwich of different materials including the electron injector layer. This layer is responsible for injecting electrons from the cathode into the OLED structure, the efficiency of which is critical to the performance of the display.
 
EI-111-2Me is a low temperature replacement for Lithium Floride (LiF), the material typically used by OLED display manufactures as the electron injector layer within an OLED display. Low temperature OLED materials reduce the cost of manufacturing and the potential damage to the underlying layers of the display, thereby improving the lifetime and voltage drift over the lifetime of the OLED device.

EI-111-2 Me enables display manufacturers to improve the efficiency and lifetime of an OLED display, as well as reduce the operating voltage and minimising voltage drift. In customer trials using EI-111 as a direct replacement for LiF, display efficiency improved by 25 per cent and lifetime by 10 per cent.

EI-111-2 Me evaporates at 200oC as opposed to LiF which requires a temperature of over 600oC, making the deposition faster and more controlled and introducing the potential of using plastic as a substrate rather than glass. The reduced manufacturing temperature also eliminates the need for costly evaporation crucibles reducing the overall cost of manufacturing.

As the market for OLED matures display manufacturers are focused on reducing cost throughout the display supply chain. EI-111-2Me provides companies with a significant opportunity to reduce cost at the same time as improving the performance of OLED displays, said says Myrddin Jones, Chief Executive Officer at OLED-T.

OLED-T is sampling of EI-111-2Me with immediate effect and will commence volume production from the fourth quarter of 2008. The new material complements OLED-T’s already strong OLED material portfolio.

Researchers at Purdue University have created the first active matrix display that uses a new class of transparent transistors and circuits. The researchers say this is a first step towards flexible color monitors and heads-up displays in car windshields.

The transistors used in the display are made of nanowires, which are tiny cylindrical structures assembled on thin glass or plastic films. The nanowires used by the researchers for the display are as small as 20 nanometers or about a thousand times thinner than the average human hair. The nanowires were used to create an OLED display that rivals current flat-panel TVs in brightness.

Europe joins forces in the form of a new integrated R&D project that aims to research and develop light emitting foils based on OLED technology. A group of 14 companies, research institutes and universities, leading in the fields of printing and electronics has formed the consortium of Fast2Light and will align efforts to demonstrate that high quality and cost-efficient lighting foils are the future for lighting and signage applications.

"The steady progress of light-emitting materials in recent years, identify OLED technology as the next solid-state, large-area light source. Within this project consortium we are able to combine European leading partners in the fields of printing, electronics and roll-to-roll processing and to create critical mass for the development of OLED lighting foils. Fast2light aims to set in place the manufacturing platforms so as to accelerate the introduction of lighting foils into the market when the light-emitting polymers meet the product specs" said Mary Kilitziraki of Holst Centre, project manager of Fast2Light.

The project, partially funded under European Union’s 7th Framework program as part of the ICT (Organic and large area electronics, visualisation and display systems) priority, will address all layers that are part of a lighting foil. It will start with the plastic substrate, and introduce high-throughput deposition and patterning methods for all of the materials necessary to fabricate the final lighting foil. Ultimately, the project will demonstrate a 30cm x 30cm, high quality lighting foil, manufactured with new optimised, disruptive R2R processes. While the project will focus on polymers, the platforms developed will be fully compatible with SMOLEDs.

Cambridge Display Technology has announced that it has been successful in its application for a 2006 Fast Track grant to develop electronic design automation software (EDA) for use in organic TFT-based (OTFT) electronic applications. This not only marks the entry of CDT into the OTFT space but will also be important in the development of displays using OTFTs, in particular flexible displays based on plastic substrates.

The project will extend the use of EDA software to organic semiconductor (OSC) materials, and accelerate the development of low-cost fabrication techniques for organic displays on both flexible and rigid substrates. It will enable the faster development of advanced structures, devices and circuits and expand the application space for organic electronics.

At SID 2007, Sony showed a new flexible OLED display, on a plastic substrate. The prototype is capable of showing 16.7Million colors, is 2.5" large and shows 120x169 pixels (80ppi). It weights 1.5 grams (without the driver).

According to Sony, this new technology will lead to the development of thinner, lighter and softer electronics.

OLED-T has demonstrated red, green and blue flexible single colour displays manufactured on a plastic substrate using its OLED materials. The demonstrator displays have been developed using a new family of materials developed by OLED-T that can be deposited by vacuum evaporation at manufacturing temperatures around 300oC. This relatively low temperature has enabled OLED-T to demonstrate flexible plastic OLEDs based on vacuum deposition for the first time.

OLED-T is now focussing research and development effort on encapsulation methods to improve the lifetime of its plastic devices. The lifetime of the initial demonstrator red devices was 60 hours at a luminance of 100 cdm-2 and 72 hours for green devices. The limited lifetime is due to high moisture permeability. The corresponding devices manufactured on a glass substrate have lifetimes in excess of 32,000 hours for the same device structure.