Power consumption - Page 31

Researchers from the UK and Switzerland have shown that a magnetically polarized current can be manipulated by electric fields. This is the first time that it was shown how you can proactively control spin with electric fields and could pave the way towards combining memory and processing power on the same chip.

The interesting part is that this discovery has been made with flexible organic semiconductors, and so could offer a step-change in the power efficiency and weight of devices based on such materials, including of course OLED displays.

Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) has published their 2011-2015 business plan. Their R&D strategy includes four priority items, one of them being OLED Lighting. Their plan is to produce 80lm/W 40,000 hours white OLEDs in 2015. They say that the cost will be ¥4 per lm - which means $3.8 for the 80lm/W device - but they do not specify the size (area) of those OLEDs.

Back in July 2009 SDK has unveild 30lm/W white OLEDs, which achieved about 40% in light output and featured a lifetime of 10,000 hours. Showa Denko are using a combination of printable phosphorescent polymer and proprietary device structure. They also claim that they already begun shipping sample panels. Here's the relevant slide from their plan presentation:

We've got some more information about AUO's OLED Lighting panels (unveiled at the FPD 2010 exhibition). AUO is showing two panels. The first is a large (245x295mm active size, the module measure 314x333mm) and thin (1.6mm) with 50lm/W efficiency. The color temperature is 3,000K, the luminance is 1500cd/m² and the color rendering index (CRI) is over 80.

The OLED is made from both phosphorescent and fluorescent materials. This probably means that they use phosphorescent Red and Green and fluorescent Blue. Back in 2006, AUO used Universal Display's PHOLED materials for their AMOLED displays, so it's pretty safe to assume that UDC is also providing materials and/or IP for AUO lighting panels.

We had the good chance to talk with Gerd Guenther, Novaled's Chief Marketing Officer. He was kind enough to answer a few of our questions, and give us some information and updates from Novaled.

Gerd, thanks for your time. Can you explain Novaled's business model to us?

When Novaled started as a spin-off from Fraunhofer and Technical University of Dresden in 2001 with just 3 people, the idea was to market its doping technology Novaled PIN OLED^®) along with its proprietary materials. Today, quite an impressive number of well known display and lighting makers are customers of Novaled. That means we offer IP, licensing and technology transfer packages but also R&D contracting as well as trainings.

Novaled 15x15 cm white OLED

Universal Display announced today "significant advances" in the performance of its UniversalP2OLED solution-processible, phosphorescent OLED material systems. UDC reported that the solution-based system now approach the performance of vacuum-evaporated PHOLEDs.

The new green system feature 66 candelas per Ampere (cd/A) and 130,000 hours lifetime at 1000 nits luminance. That's about two times improvement from a year ago. The new red system offers 15 cd/A and 62,000 hours, and the light blue offers 18 cd/A and 5,000 hours. UDC has also demonstrated ink-jet printing with comparable performance to devices made by spin-coating.

Update: There are reports that Nemoptic declared bankruptcy, and the web site is now down. That's a shame, they seemed to have very interesting technology. Hopefully someone will pick it up and continue development...
 

Nemoptic has developed the world's first display that combines a color OLED with a monochrome Bistable Nematic LCD (Binem). The idea is that you can choose whether you want to have an OLED displays, or a e-paper like display, depending on the application and lighting condition (this somewhat reminds us of Pixel-Qi displays).

A Binem display, which is patented by Nemoptic offers the optical performance of a normal Nematic display but is still retains the image even without any power (i.e. it is bistable, like e-paper). Nemoptic displays are suitable for e-readers and other applications. Nemoptic claims that their displays offer a very high reflectance, a good contrast and good colors. They can also be made on flexible substrates - which means that the OLED/Binem display can probably be made flexible, too.

There are rumors that Samsung is set to release a new phone called Continuum (SCH-i400). Beside the large AMOLED (probably Super-AMOLED as it might be Galaxy-S branded) it will also have a secondary OLED display just below the main. It's called the "Ticker," and it'll show weather, RSS feeds and other kinds of notifications. The
Ticker will automatically turn on when you grasp the bottom of the
phone. The idea is to get the information you need without turning on the large power-hungry main display.

Universal Display and Armstrong are showing their efficient white OLED lighting ceiling system. Each luminaire is built from four OLED panels, each 15cmX15cm (overall size is 15cmX60cm), mounted in outcoupling enhancement lenses. The demonstration lamp has four luminaries. Each panel offers 58 lumens per Watt (lm/W) which translates into a luminaire efficacy calculated to be 51 lm/W.

This lighting system has been developed with the help of the US Department of Energy (DOE) - which gave a $1.9 million grant in July 2008. Here's a short video that UDC released in July 2009 showing a prototype system:

STMicroelectronics has unveiled their latest power management chip aimed for AMOLED (and Super-AMOLED) display - the STOD03A. The new chip has an improved performance (compared to the STOD02). ST says that only six external components
are needed to complete the power-supply circuitry, making the STOD03A the most attractive for handset builders.

The STOD03A
uses highly efficient synchronous operation for both voltage outputs,
achieving up to 85% overall efficiency for longer overall battery life.
Other power-saving features include automatic pulse-skipping operation
for low power consumption at light loads, and a true shutdown mode
drawing less than one microamp activated through the enable pin (EN). ST
has achieved its high performance using its Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI)
technology as part of its latest-generation BCD fabrication process,
which enables analog, digital and closely spaced high-power circuitry to
be built on the same chip.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded three new OLED lighting small-business grants to Universal Display. The largest project is in Phase II already, and is focused on the development of ultra-high-efficiency phosphorescent OLEDs for lighting applications". UDC will produce a white OLED that features 120lm/W efficiency by improving out-coupling of light from the OLED structure through high-index substrates and low-voltage operation.

The second will focus on thermal management issues and optical improvements. UDC will make 15cm square panels with various designs, to see the thermal impacts of each. Lower temperature operation will help to extend the lifetime of the OLEDs.