tandem architecture - Page 7

In a very interesting post, The Elec states that Apple has reached out to both Samsung Display and LG Display, requesting that the display suppliers develop a longer-lifetime OLED display for Apple's next iPad Pro devices.

LG 12.8-inch P-OLED in Mercedes Benz 2021 S-Class

The lifetime of the current crop of mobile OLED devices is not enough for Apple's iPad - which is designed to be used for a longer period of time compared to a smartphone. An increased lifetime will also result in lower burn-in problems which seem to trouble Apple.

Kopin Corporation announced in January 2020 that the company developed a new double-stack OLED architecture that enables brighter microdisplays with longer lifetime. Earlier Kopin announced a new 1.3" 2560x2560 OLED microdisplay, developed with Panasonic and Lakeside Optoelectronic, that uses the new double-stack architecture and achieves brightness of over 1,000 nits.

Kopin 1" 2k x 2k OLED Lightning microdisplay

Kopin now announced that they have achieved a breakthrough color fidelity (> 115% sRGB) for its latest 1.3" 2.6K x 2.6K OLED display. Kopin believes that this is the world’s highest color fidelity achieved on dual-stack OLED microdisplays - equal to that on the best single-stack OLED microdisplays.

First-O-Lite (FOL) was established in 2010 in Nanjing, China with an aim to become an OLED lighting developer and producer. Based on its hybrid tandem architecture, FOL has a 2-Gen OLED lighting production fab that is currently producing 70 lm/W OLED lighting panels.

This article details the company's OLED lighting panels, its strategy to create an initial health-lighting niche market in china, its current product families and its technology and business roadmaps going forward.

During the International Display Workshops that was help a few weeks ago in Fukuoka Japan, LG Display discussed its new WOLED tandem stack that it plans to introduce soon to its OLED TVs and lighting panels.

LG Display says that its new stack is a "3-stack-OLED" while its existing stack is a "2-stack-OLED". As you can see in the image above, LG apparently counts each emissive layer as a different stack in this case.

Report from Japan say that Sharp developed a new 3.4" bendable OLED prototype. The AMOLED display features a resolution of 540x960 (326 PPI), it has an aperture ratio of 57% and a thickness of 70um. The bending radius is 10mm, and the whole panel weighs 2 grams. The backplane is IGZO.

While this is reported as news, this panel seems to be quite similar to OLEDs Sharp unveiled at SID 2012 (yes, almost four years ago!). According to the reports, Sharp says that the display has a long lifetime and is "color shift free", as a result of newly developed tandem structure.

UBI Research estimates that the OLED lighting market will take off in 2015, and will grow to reach $4.7 billion in revenue by 2020. According to UBI within three years a 100x100 mm OLED lighting panel will cost under $5 to produce. This is assuming a large substrate (1270x1270 mm), a fast production process and a tandem structure.

In such a scenario, the largest cost (over 80%) will be for the OLED materials. This means that at that stage companies will put most of their focus on lowering the material usage and cheaper OLED materials.

NEC Lighting announced that they developed a new OLED lighting device that has an efficiency of 156 lm/W - that's the world's most efficient OLED to date. This device was co-developed with Yamagata University's research group led by Junji Kido. You can see Professor Kido's work in the video below (from 2011):

The device is 2x2 mm in size and the brightness is 1,000 cd/m2. NEC said that the emitter materials were developed in the Kido Lab of Yamagata University. Unfortunately NEC did not reveal the structure and technologies used to fabricate this OLED.

First-O-Lite has sent us an update regarding their OLED lighting R&D progress. The company have successfully developed a hybrid tandem WOLED lighting device, which features 77.2 lm/W and a CRI of 87.2 (@2090 cd/m²). The CIE is (0.46, 0.42).

The company's Gen-1 production line will be able to produce samples by the end of the year. They are also developing a Gen-2 production line (in a $40 million investment) that will be able to produce "large sized" panels by early 2013. The plan is to use the Gen-2 fab to make small-scale production for early market development.

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

In June 2008, I interviewed Corey Hewitt and Dr. James Buntaine from Kodak OLED Systems.

Mr. Corey Hewitt is the co-general manager, operations manager and VP of Kodak OLED Systems. Dr. James Buntaine is the second co-general manager, and also the CTO and VP.

They were kind enough to send us an update on Kodak's OLED program and market outlook:

Kodak OLED Technology Update & Advancements

Kodak expertise and experience lies in material discovery, organic layer design, mechanistic understanding, image science, panel/module design, and manufacturing technology. These key value drivers associated with the Kodak technology, know-how and patents, maintain Kodak as an industry leader in enabling both the OLED flat-panel display and OLED solid-state lighting industries. Provided below are selected key areas technology and Kodak accomplishments: