Substrate - Page 10

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.

Vitex Systems today announced its proprietary moisture and oxygen barrier solution demonstrated impressive reliability results when used for high-temperature applications. The company's revolutionary Barix(TM) thin-film barrier was continuously tested at 100 degrees C, 120 degrees C and as high as 140 degrees C for more than 500 hours without losing its barrier integrity. Moreover, results indicated that the barrier can maintain its integrity for more than 1,000 hours in this severe environment.

Vitex's Barix thin-film barrier uses an organic and inorganic multi-layer structure. To demonstrate product compatibility, it was used to create the world's first high-resolution AMOLED, which leverages an amorphous silicon backplane on a flexible metal foil. This flexible display -- jointly developed by Universal Display Corp. and LG. Philips LCD -- was showcased at last month's Society for Information Display (SID) conference in Long Beach, Calif. Similar encapsulation was shown by Samsung SDI on the world's first, and thinnest, full-color top emission AMOLED on a metal foil during last year's show.

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.

The project involves the development of a process to deposit high conductivity, very thin metal tracks onto glass and plastic substrates. The process, which is seen as an alternative to conventional inkjet printing methods, involves the use of lasers to expose selected material.

Flexible displays are expected to require a technology such as this for the formation of the TFT backplane, and the process under development would be applicable to plasma (PDP) and LCD displays and even organic photovoltaics as well as PLEDs.

Universal Display Corporation will announce today it has been awarded a $1.275 million contract extension from the U.S. Army Communication Electronics Research and Development Engineering Center (CERDEC). The extension will leverage the Company's achievements under its prior Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase III contract.

Under the extended program, Universal Display, Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and L-3 Communications - Display Systems, will continue developing a flexible, active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) display for a wrist-based communications device. The combined team plans to incorporate enhancements in performance and functionality into the next generation of display prototypes to be delivered to the U.S. Departments of the Army and the Air Force.

The full-color AMOLED display device is enabled by Universal Display's proprietary PHOLED, TOLED® top-emitting OLED and FOLED® flexible OLED technologies, as well as by PARC's LTPS TFT technology. The electronics and packaging for the wrist-based device are from L-3 Communications Display Systems.

OLEDs and paper-like display technology are rapidly leading to new opportunities in the display industry according to a new report from NanoMarkets. The report predicts that combined sales of OLED displays and paper-like displays will reach $10.2 billion by 2011 and then go on to reach $14.7 billion by 2013.

Researchers at GE Plastics have detailed a plastic-substrate system that they claim will lead to OLED (organic-light-emitting-diode)-based displays that are more flexible, lighter, more durable, and less costly to build than those based on glass substrates.

The system combines a high-temperature Lexan polycarbonate film with a transparent coating that protects the display from oxygen and moisture. The high clarity and high temperature resistance of the Lexan film enable the construction of a 125-micron-thick substrate that can withstand the heat involved in OLED fabrication and still allow optimal light transmission, according to the company.
In addition, the system should be amenable to high-volume-manufacturing processes that will drive down cost.

GE Global Research is presenting details on its successful development of a substrate system for flexible OLEDs at the Flexible Displays & Microelectronics Conference, Feb. 6-9 in Phoenix, Ariz. The system features a developmental high-temperature Lexan polycarbonate (PC) film from GE - Plastics combined with a transparent, ultra-high-barrier coating to help protect the OLED device against oxygen and moisture.

This research, jointly funded by the U.S. Display Consortium (USDC) and GE, is designed to address the critical need for plastic substrates that can enable cost-effective, lightweight, flexible organic displays. Min Yan, GE materials scientist, will give a presentation on the new substrate system, which is currently being produced in batch mode and will ultimately be moved to a roll-to-roll process for cost efficiency. In addition, GE - Plastics is featuring a variety of plastic films for electrical/electronic display applications during the exhibition.

The market for inks, substrates and other materials used in printable electronics is expected to reach $1.9 billion by 2010 rising to $8.9 billion in 2013, according to a new report from NanoMarkets.

The report provides a thorough analysis of market opportunities available in printable electronics firms for a wide range of materials including nano metallic silver and polymer inks, as well other a wide variety of other inks made from metals, organic materials and standard semiconductors.