Technical / Research - Page 102

Eiji Shiko from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, developed an OLED device that emits circularly polarized light in the visible light range. This could enable 3D displays on OLEDs.

To produce the circularly polarized light in the visible light range, the spin state during the light emission process is controlled by injecting a spin-polarized carrier from the ferromagnetic negative electrode into the emission layer.

Toshiba exhibited a new technology that is designed to form patterns called "nano-grating,"
which have a pitch of several hundred nanometers, on a SiO₂ substrate,
improving the light extraction efficiency by 1.6 times compared with a case where no measures are taken.

Toshiba created the diffraction grating on a 4-inch SiO₂
wafer and used it for a 2mm-square monochrome OLED device. As a result,
the total flux was increased by 60% compared to when no grating is
used. As far as the emission peak wavelength is concerned, the light
emission intensity was virtually doubled, according to the company. 

Read more at TechOn

MicroOLED released a new high-definition interface between their high-res microdisplays and TI's OMAP (mobile) platform. The new interface will enable 3D video using video glasse, using a single HDMI connection (with two video streams left and right SD video).

MicroOLED's OLED-on-CMOS microdisplay tech enabled WVGA+ high res (872x500 pixels in each display). It'll be interesting to see when we'll see a product based on their microdisplays...

Merck is a global pharmaceutical and chemical company based in Germany. The company designs, develops and manufactures a wide range of specialised materials including high performance light emitting materials for OLEDs. The OLED business belongs to Mercks' Liquid-Crystal (LC) unit.

I managed to conduct an interview with Dr. Udo Heider, the VP of the LC business unit at Merck (it's called the LC/OLED unit) about their OLED program.

Q: Hello Dr. Heider, and thank you for this interview. Can you describe your range of OLED products in more detail? Are you just into OLED materials, or other IPs as well?

The governments of Hong Hong and neighboring Shenzhen, China will fund R&D projects, with a 4.7M$ fund.

One of the areas in which they are interested in is "Development of high-performance silicon driver intellectual properties for display panel (TFT-LCD and OLED) applications."

Uni-Pixel and Samsung announced that they will collaborate on UniPixel's TMOS display etchnology. TMOS (Time Multiplexed Optical Shutter) will potentially bring displays that are lower in cost, have better performance and lower power consumption that LCDs or even OLEDs.

TMOS is based on temporal additive color. Short bursts of red, green and blue light are emitted through the same dot so quickly that the eye also sees them as a single color. But in this case, different durations of red, green and blue create different shades and hues.

The Fraunhofer IPMS is one of the leading OLED research centers, mostly focused on OLED lighting. I've had the good chance to interview Prof. Karl Leo, the Director of the Institute.

Large Area OLED lighting panel,Fraunhofer

Karl talks about COMEDD (their new OLED research/production center), his views on OLED lighting and Europe's plans for this market, their transparent OLED research program, OLED Television, and even an OLED based pico-projector. I think this is a very interesting interview!

Link to interview

I recently had the chance to talk with the nice guys over the Fraunhofer IPMS in Germany, and the Institute Director (Prof Karl Leo) have agreed to do a short interview and talk about their OLED program.

These guys have been working on OLED since 2000, now organized under the name Center for Organic Materials and Electronics Devices Dresden (COMEDD). COMEDD's aim is to do not only research, but also pilot fabrication. More on COMEDD here.

Prof. Dr. Karl Leo, since 1993, is full professor of optoelectronics at the Technische Universität Dresden and starting 2007 institute director of the Fraunhofer IPMS. Additionally he is one of the founders of the Spin-Off Novaled AG.

During the Photonics West 2009 the Fraunhofer IPMS will present the prototype of a bi-directional OLED microdisplay with an imaging CMOS photo diode matrix interlaced in a QVGA display (12 x 9 mm²), both are integrated and work at the CMOS chip.

Furthermore, an optical flux sensor will be presented, which includes the required light source on the CMOS-sensor chip. A CMOS photo diode line allows the detection of the speed of a particle flow and an embedded OLED light source in the form of stripes in parallel to the photo diode line provides the illumination of the medium.

Due to the achieved reduction of the expenditure regarding the construction and circuit technology numerous applications of those devices are enabled. Fields of application vary from chemistry, medicine to life science. Other applications of OLED-on-CMOS include light barriers, opto-couplers and optical communications.

Graphene has great mechanical and electronic properties (it is basically an atom-thick strong carbon nanotube), but up until now it's been very difficult to make in a large size. Now scientists say they can make a centimetre-scale samples of the stuff.

If/When this technique actually works, it could lead to create films that are transparent and flexible - which could be used in displays (also in solar cells).One of the problems with flexible OLEDs is the backplane. Some work on metal-foil, and some on plastic, but Graphene could prove to be the ideal material.