Power consumption - Page 17

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.

A couple of weeks ago LG Chem announced that they have started to mass produce the world's largest OLED lighting panel at 320 x320 mm. The panels are 0.88 mm thick and feature 60 lm/W, CRI of over 90 and an output level at 800 lm - 1,200 lm. LG today revealed that the panels cost $680 per panel (lower prices for bulk orders).

LG Chem also announced that they completed the development of their "truly flexible" plastic-based OLED panels. They now offer engineering samples for $250 and mass production is expected by July 2015. Prices will be lower when mass production starts.

Universal Display and Sumitomo Chemical signed an OLED Technology License Agreement. UDC granted Sumitomo license rights to manufacture and sell solution-processed OLED lighting products. The agreement runs for the life of Universal Display’s relevant intellectual property rights.

Sumitomo aims to use UDC's technologies to increase the efficacy of their PLED lighting panels. The company will "explore business opportunities in lighting applications that take their printed polymer OLED technology to the next generation lighting.

Ason Technology was established in 2006 in Japan to develop OLED lighting technologies. In November 2013 Ason unveiled their first OLED lighting panel, and today we're bringing new details on the company's technology and business.

Ason spent almost eight years to develop a new multi-stack structure. Compared to the multi-photo-emission (MPE) structure developed by IMES, Ason's stack enables many layers (MPE allows up to 2 or 3 max). Stacking several layers allows the OLED panels to feature a high brightness without compromising the lifetime. In addition to the so-called Ason-Stack, the company also uses a unique diffuse reflector. Ason says that their technology will allow them to produce relatively affordable and efficient high-brightness OLEDs, which will also feature a longer lifetime and larger size compared to traditional OLED as well as no-angle dependency.

Samsung Display introduced three new special displays modes enabled by AMOLED technology - an ultra power-saving mode (already used in some of their smartphones), color weakness mode and super dimming mode. These are great examples how OLED's emissive nature can be used for innovative solutions.

The color weakness mode can help people with color vision deficiency to distinguish red and green clearly - by inceasing (or decreasing) the brightness of the red and green subpixels.

Microsoft research propose a new OLED power consumption technique (which they call FingerShadow) that uses local-dimming for screen areas covered by user fingers. Because OLED pixels only consume power when lit, this is a clever way to save power when people interactive with their smartphones or tablets.

According to Microsoft, they did a short study (10 users) and on average 11.14% of the screen is covered by fingers - which means FingerShadow can achieve a power saving of 5-22% (average 12.96%) with almost no overhead. Clever idea there Microsoft.

Samsung's newest phones, the Galaxy Note 4 and Note 4 Edge haven't been released yet, but my friend Raymond Soneira already got his hands on two pre-release production devices and posted the first review of these new AMOLED smartphones.

So first of all, the regular Note 4 displays. Ray's conclusion? This is the best mobile display ever tested at DisplayMate, surpassing the AMOLED used in the GS5 and the GN3, and also the one used in the Galaxy Tab S. The GN4 display improves on previous generations in the display density (PPI), color accurate, peak brightness (750 cd/m²) and screen readability in high ambient light and the display power efficiency.

LG Chem announced it developed new OLED lighting panels that features 100 lm/W and a lifetime of 40,000 hours. The plan is to release these panels towards the end of 2014. It's not clear, but it's likely that LG Chem aims to replace all current 60 lm/W OLED panels with the new 100 lm/W ones.

According to reports from Korea, LG Chem claims that their OLED panels will be available at lower prices compared to LED lighting. I'm guessing this is more of a "forward looking" statement as OLED panels are still very expensive, even after LG's plan to cut OLED prices by about 60% in Q3 2014 (from about $600/Klm to about $200/Klm).

When Samsung launched the Galaxy S5, DisplayMate tested the new display (a 5.1" FHD, 432 PPI, Super AMOLED) and found it to not only be the best mobile display ever tested at Displaymate, but also 27% more efficient than the 5" Full-HD one on the GS4. Samsung told DisplayMate that the improvement mostly came from more efficient OLED materials, but they never told us which materials exactly.

During a recent investors conference, Universal Display revealed that the GS5 uses their new red emitter material, and the company says that "Samsung attributes the increase in power efficiency" to the new emitter. This is rather surprising as I wouldn't have thought a new red emitter can effect the power efficiency of the whole display so dramatically.

A couple of months ago, Samsung release the Galaxy S5 LTE-A, that sports the company's latest AMOLED panel - a 5.1" QHD (2560x1440) Super AMOLED. Anandtech posted a long review of this new phone, and they find that the display is actually a little bit more efficient than the 5.1" FHD panel used in the GS5, even though it sports a higher resolution (which usually means a less efficient display as the aperture ratio gets smaller.

Anandtech further says that Samsung told them they switched to a new, improved emitter material for the new QHD panel, which explains the increased efficiency. This is interesting as the QHD display was released only a few months after Samsung started producing the FHD panel, which by itself was 27% more efficient than the previous generation panels - also due to more efficient OLED materials.