Technical / Research - Page 25

Japan Display (JDI) announced that it has signed a technology development agreement with Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) regarding the development of Oxide-semiconductor backplane technology for next-generation displays, including OLED displays.

SEL's backplane technology is called c-axis aligned crystal (CAAC), which has been co-developed with Sharp. CAAC is based on an IGZO thin-film that has a novel crystal structure.

Universal Display developed a new AMOLED structure that is a sort of WOLED - RGB hybrid structure. The idea is to use a large blue sub-pixel and a large yellow sub-pixel that is split into three areas - unfiltered and red and green filtered.

This structure is easier to deposit compared to a true RGB AMOLED (that requires very fine patterning of red, green and blue subpixels) but increase the aperture ratio compared to a WOLED architecture (which LG for example uses in its OLED TVs) - which increases the lifetime and color gamut of the display.

Researchers from St. Andrews University in the UK used a micro blue OLED display to active individual live cells from a human embryonic kidney cell line that were tweaked to produce a light-sensitive protein.

The researchers say that this ability to use OLEDs to activate individual cells may enable cell-specific optogenetic control in cultured neuronal networks, brain slices, and other biomedical research applications. They say that OLEDs are an "ideal platform technology for investigating and controlling biological processes with single cell resolution".

The Fraunhofer FEP announced new large-area flexible OLED lighting panel prototypes that have been fabricated on ultra-thin glass and encapsulated with a ultra-thin glass foil in the same process.

The new process developed at the Fraunhofer institute is able to deposit OLEDs on the flexible glass and encapsulation it using an additional flexible glass layer - all in a a single roll-to-roll manufacturing step.

Germany-based OLED emitter developer Cynora announced it has made significant progress in its highly efficient blue OLED emitter material developments during the last 6 months. The company's materials are not yet ready for commercialization, but the company believes it is on its way.

Cynora develops TADF-based emitters, focusing on blue-color emitters. Cynora has developed deep blue material reaching an EQE of 16.3% (at 100 cd/m²) compared to 3% reached in October 2015, a factor 5 improvement in six months.

Researchers from Korea's Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have managed to create OLEDs that feature a 60% increase in light extraction efficiency and a 15% wider viewing angles.

To create these OLEDs, the scientists investigated the optical properties of the firefly's light-emitting cuticle which is patterned with tiny hierarchical structures. Out of all light-emitting animals, the firefly makes light in the most efficient way.

Back in 2011 the University of Florida announced a new organic-TFT backplane technology called CN-VOLET, which is especially suited for OLED panels. Earlier in 2010, the University spun-off a company called nVerPix to commercialize this technology.

At the SID DisplayWeek 2016, researchers from the University of Florida and the University of Seoul will present the world's first AMOLED display panel that use nVerPix's CN-VOLET backplane. The 2.5" monochrome display prototypes features a QVGA (320x240) resolution.

Researchers from Japan's Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) and Advanced Film Device developed a display that includes an OLED display on top of a reflective LCD. The idea is that such a display have high visibility in both a dark environment (using the emissive OLED) and a bright one (using the reflective LCD).

This is similar somewhat to transflective LCD displays and can prove to be a smart solution. The researchers say that the same FET layer is used to control both display devices and so results in a low-power device. The researchers will present this new development at SID DisplayWeek next month and hopefully we will bring more information.

OLED material developer Molecular Glasses announced that its phosphorescent host material was demonstrated to improve the lifetime of OLED devices by up to 1,500%, with external quantum efficiency of 20% and minimal luminance roll-off. This is in comparison to the "state-of-the-art phosphorescent host mCBP".

It is not clear to which host this is compared to, but the company says that these results were obtained following a 96 prototype device experiment that was recently completed at OLEDWorks' DOE approved laboratory.

The UK-based Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) recently installed a new roll to roll (R2R) slot die/screen printing and encapsulation line that can be used to print, coat and pattern a range of organic and in-organic solution based coatings.

The new line can assist researchers with development towards commercialization of a host of printable electronics applications - including photovoltaics, OTFT and printed batteries. The system was custom-built by VDL, and it consists of two pieces of equipment - a roll to roll slot die coating and rotary screen printing and a coating toolset.