Technical / Research - Page 132

Vitex Systems announced that it has been awarded an R&D contract from the U.S. Display Consortium (USDC) to scale up its flexible glass substrate technology to roll-type manufacturing for producing flexible OLED displays.

Vitex has developed a thin-film encapsulation solution, called Barix, to resolve moisture and oxygen sensitivity problems common in flexible substrates. Under this new USDC contract, Vitex will explore producing the flexible glass substrate on a high-volume, roll-to-roll manufacturing line with the improved barrier performance and lower defect levels needed to meet stringent quality requirements associated with producing OLED displays.

Cambridge Display Technology and Switzerland's ILFORD Imaging will jointly evaluate the performance of new PLED materials.

ILFORD develops and produces precision coated, ink jet printing consumables. The company has discovered that certain nanoporous structures have potentially valuable properties when applied to P-OLED displays. These new materials, when integrated into a display device, have optical properties which help to transmit light which would otherwise be trapped and lost.

Luxell Technologies has signed an agreement with Hong Kong's IMC Capital to launch a China-based production center based on Luxell's OLED technologies - with a third Chinese partner company (which hasn't been found yet). The investment in this project will be around $50 million.

Luxell Research (a subsidiary of Luxell) has developed the 'Black Layer' - a thin film structure that virtually eliminates ambient reflections, thereby enhancing display readability, suitable for OLED displays.

Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) announced that the EU-funded STEPLED project has concluded - with "outstanding success". The STEPLED project was undertaken with the aims of understanding the science which controls the spin states of polymer-based OLED (PLEDs), critical to developing more power efficient displays.

The STEPLED project focused on establishing high efficiency materials using high singlet-ratio fluorescent polymers, but also worked on soluble phosphorescent emitter. CDT said that STEPLED achieved the production of a standard two-layer device structure with an external quantum efficiency (EQE) of 6%. This has been described as 'outstanding', being almost twice the efficiency of previous materials. The impressive performance was achieved using red emitting polymers, typically the lowest efficiency color in RGB displays.

The EU launched a new OLED lighting product (as part of the 6th framework) called OLLA. This is an integrated R&D project to advance OLED technologies with a goal to demonstrate (in 2008) high-brightness white OLED light tiles for use in general lighting applications, with a long lifetime and high energy efficiency.

The OLLA consortium consists of 24 partners from 8 European countries, lead by Philips.

Researchers from Kyoto University together with Mitsubishi Chemical, Pioneer, and Rohm have developed a new bendable OLED display panel.

We do not have a photo of this display, but they did present a monochrome (blue) business card-sized prototype. The researchers say that their technology can be adapted to full-color displays.

Veeco introduced the WykoNT4800, a profiler intended for applications in OLED displays, radio frequency identification tags (RFID), biosensors and other flexible circuit devices. The new profiler combines high-speed, high-resolution optical profiling with large format staging and is intended for critical R&D and production metrology applications, such as surface shape and texture measurement.

Articus announced it will merge with Canada's Nova-Plasma (NPI), a provider of High-Barrier and Ultra-High Barrier ("UHB") coatings and processes to the flap panel display industry.

Articus says that NPI's patented technology will enable the full-scale deployment of OLED / PLED displays by ensuring device protection from oxygen and water vapor. This technology suits flexible OLED panels. The merged company is seeking investment and strategic relationships, needed to "take leading position" in UHB material market.

Universal Display (together with Princeton University) has been awarded DOE project to demonstrate a novel smart window concept for residential and commercial buildings, based on transparent OLEDs.

UDC will create panels that integrate transparent OLEDs with reflective modulating light shuttering techniques. These windows will be able to switch rapidly from being a highly-efficient, solid-state white light source to being transparent for efficient daylight transmission.

Daewoo Electronics says that OLED technology is set to become one of their core businesses. The company will invest $36 million in the next 2 years. They have already finished their first pilot production line.

Daewoo also develop their own propitiatory technologies: new isolation technology, Thin film protection layer and Plasma Switched OLED (PSOLED).