Technical / Research - Page 120

Cambridge Display Technology and Toppan Printing, the leading information and communications company of Tokyo, Japan, have produced a number of 5.5 inch full color active matrix polymer OLED (PLED) displays using a roll printing method. A demonstrator will be shown at the SID conference in San Francisco. The displays - believed to be the first of their type ever produced - are the result of close co-operation between the two companies and part of their joint development activity announced in February 2005.

Solution processing of PLED (also called P-OLED) displays is more commonly associated with inkjet printing, and the companies believe that roll printing represents a promising alternative production technique which offers the potential for very good display uniformity, very high display resolution and low capital and operating costs. In the future, this type of roll printing process could be well suited for making flexible P-OLED displays. CDT believes that this combination of properties can only be achieved with solution-based printing processes.

MagnaChip announced that the company established an R&D Center in Tokyo, Japan, for its Large Display Driver IC (DDI) business.

The new R&D center's strategic location will enable MagnaChip to even more effectively target the broader Asian Market. The focus will be on providing dedicated research and development of large TFT-LCD and OLED drivers ICs for larger applications such as TV and PC monitors. The center is staffed by seven technology, development and engineering experts from the local Japanese market. Several application engineers are expected to be added later in the year.

Samsung SDI said it is the first company to develop so-called active matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) display panels.
The new product is much faster in displaying 3D images than existing liquid crystal displays (LCDs), Samsung SDI said in a statement Sunday.
The 4.3-inch (10.9-centimeter) AMOLED panel, now for mobile phones, guarantees "the world's highest definition" in terms of 3D images, it added.
Samsung SDI said it was stepping up the development of the technology for use with notebook computers and televisions.

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Ron Mertens from OLED-Info.com recently had the opportunity to interview Chyi-Shan Suen, director of sales & marketing of Vitex systems.

Headquartered in San Jose CA, Vitex is an IP-centric licensing, engineering service and material company in the business of thin-film barrier coatings and flexible substrates for the FPD market. Vitex's development of a thin-film moisture barrier technology continues to gain acceptance within the industry due to its demonstrated ability to meet the rigorous environmental requirements for thin-film encapsulation of bottom- and top-emission OLEDs. In addition, this technology can be applied to a wide range of organic semiconductor applications such as photovoltaics and batteries.

Q: First of all, thank you for accepting to do this interview session with us. Can you describe the Barix system?

The Barix Encapsulation™ is comprised of alternating layers of organic and inorganic films. The organic layer smooths and planarizes the display surface, while the inorganic is the real barrier. The total thickness of the coating is only about 3 microns or less. It is flexible, transparent and is applied at low temperature. The coating can be applied directly on top of an OLED display, eliminating the mechanical packaging components while providing the moisture and oxygen protection required by an OLED display.

Universal Display Corporation today announced it has been awarded a $100,000 contract to provide the U.S. Department of Navy with a prototype communications device based on a full-color, AMOLED prototype built on metallic foil.

Under the terms of the contract, Universal Display will deliver an active-matrix PHOLED display prototype built on flexible metallic foil integrated into a wrist-worn wireless communication device. This prototype is enabled by the Company's proprietary PHOLED phosphorescent OLED, FOLED® flexible OLED and TOLED® top-emission OLED technologies. The display will be built on flexible metal foil to provide flexibility, light weight and ruggedness and will use poly-silicon backplane technology from Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). The prototype will then be integrated into a wrist-mounted wireless device by L-3 Communications Display Systems.

UDC and Mitsubishi Chemical Announce Agreement to Collaborate on Ink Jet Printable OLED Materials Development. The Collaboration is Directed Towards Developing Materials for use in Phosphorescent OLED Displays Fabricated Through Solution or "Wet" Processing Methods.

"Collaborating with a world-class chemical company like Mitsubishi Chemical allows us to share ideas and help each other reach the next level of innovation for OLED materials based on our PHOLED™ phosphorescent OLED technology and Mitsubishi Chemical's expertise in OLED chemicals and ink formulation," said Steven V. Abramson, President and Chief Operating Officer of Universal Display. "Mitsubishi Chemical's commitment to printable phosphorescent OLEDs, which we call P2OLEDs™, indicates that ink jet printable PHOLED technology has real commercial potential. By working in concert on the development of next-generation P2OLED materials with Mitsubishi Chemical, we hope to accelerate this process."

Nippon Steel Chemical and Universal Display (UDC) today announced a collaboration to develop new markets for red phosphorescent OLED materials. As the background of this collaboration, there is the fact that a commercially-available red host material from NSCC is compatible with commercially-available red phosphorescent OLED emitters from Universal Display.
By using red phosphorescence, overall power consumption of the display can be reduced by more than 40% as compared to using fluorescent red OLEDs. The combination of Universal Display's red PHOLED materials and NSCC's host material, called NS11, offers very efficient, highly desirable red colors with long operational lifetime. These products are currently available for evaluation and commercial use from the two companies.

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.

Mitsubishi Chemical has announced that it has developed a solution-based Organic Semiconductor Material, which is expected to open the way to the development of a new class of larger, cheaper flat-panel displays like OLED televisions. Only Pentacene has been reported as a practical small-molecular material having high mobility, but it has to be processed by the high-cost vacuum deposition method.

Polythiophene has been reported as a soluble polymer material, but it can be applied only to a limited area, like electrical papers, because of its low mobility. The newly developed MCRC organic semiconductor material is solution-processible small-molecular material having the high mobility of 1.4cm2/Vs because of its high-crystalline characteristics, according to the company.

This mobility is one of the world's best - equal to amorphous-silicon, the most popular inorganic transistor material. Also, this unique material has potential to be patterned by the laser, different from traditional photolithographic method, which enables high-resolution patterning. MCRC successfully drove an organic light-emitting device (OLED) with the transistors fabricated with its newly developed material. This material has been jointly developed with Professor Noboru Ono of Ehime University, Japan, and the transistor device has been jointly fabricated with Associate Professor Reiji Hattori of Kyushu University, Japan.

Researchers at the Regroupement Quebecois sur les Materiaux de Pointe (RQMP) in Quebec, Canada have assembled an organic light emitting diode (OLED) that uses thin and conductive single wall carbon nanotube sheets as the transparent electrode. The performance of their electrode rivals that of the transparent conducting oxide - indium tin oxide - currently used in commercial applications.
By following the fabrication procedure they developed, the researchers succeeded in producing a high-performance OLED on this new electrode material. In their work they also outline the parameters that can be further optimized in order improve the performance of their design. "In addition to their flexibility, carbon nanotube sheets exhibit a number of properties that make them an attractive alternative to transparent conducting oxides for display and lighting applications," says Carla Aguirre, the leading author of the paper. "By applying the appropriate chemical treatment they can in principle be also made to replace the metal electrode in order to make OLEDs that emit light from both sides."

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