Technical / Research - Page 31

Samsung SDI and LG Chem are already developing bendable Li-Ion batteries, but Nokia is aiming higher: the company recently filed a patent for a graphene-based flexible transparent self-charging photon battery. This is still very early technology probably, and we're not sure if the company actually aims to commercialize it, but it's still exciting.

Nokia's battery design can regenerate itself immediately after discharge through continuous chemical reactions, without an external energy input - just from the humidity in the air). This could prove to be a truly energy autonomous device.

A UK-based star-up called R&D Core developed a new touch-display technology that is especially suited for flexible display. The company is collaborating with Plastic Logic to test the new technology.

SEL flexible touch-enabled OLED prototype

R&D Core's Digital Resistive Area Sensing (DRAS) is placed behind the display and responds to pressure. This has several advantages - it works with insulating materials (such as globes), it is less prone to breakage and it is more suitable for flexible displays. Last year we reported on similar technology from Peratech.

Researchers at the Swedish Umea University have shown that if you place semiconductors polymers on a layer of graphene, they transport electrical charges more efficiently than when the polymers are placed on a silicon substrate.

This discovery means that graphene can enable more efficient charge transport in organic electronics such as OLEDs or OPVs.

MRAM developer Crocus Technology developed a new MRAM-based magnetic sensor that can be used to detect the shape and bendability of flexible displays. The idea is that you place a sensor every 5 cm or so (depending on the display size and bending radius) and this allows you to determine whether the display is bent and in which way.

A flexible sensor such as this can be used to correct the image that gets deformed when bent. It can also be used potentially for UI purposes - similar to Nokia's Kinetic prototype phone shown in 2011.

Kateeva unveiled a new mass production flexible OLED thin film encapsulation (TFE) system based on their ink-jet technology. The YIELDjet FLEX can enable cost-effective encapsulation deposition, and Kateeva says that the first mass-production system will ship to a customer in Asia later this month. This customer is probably Samsung Display (which recently invested in Kateeva), but this is not confirmed.

Kateeva says that inkjet printing enables superb particle performance, high efficiency and excellent scalability. The YIELDjet system is enclosed in a pure-nitrogen chamber, which is the best OLED processing environment, shielding the OLED materials from moisture and air. The ink-jet system provides exceptional planarization of substrate surface structures and particles and results in unprecedented film uniformity.

Colnatec announced a new thin-film controller which they say is an exceptional and affordable alternative to existing models. The Eon-ID (a rackmount unit with an integrated display and intuitive UI) offers a versatile design that incorporates hardware, display and software.

Colnatec says that the Eon-ID is ideal for OLED applications where the crystal can experience excess rate noise which leads to inaccurate thickness measurement and premature crystal failure. Combined with a temperature controlled QCM and a specially treated crystal, Eon-ID can reduce crystal noise to insignificant levels.

DisplayCentral posted an interesting article on LG Display's OLED TV program. The author reports from a discussion he had with Changho Oh, Senior VP for LG Display’s OLED TV Development Division, in which Changho says that LGD is investing heavily in soluble OLED production and aims to have such panels available in 2018.

A few days ago we reported that an LG Display researcher revealed that the company is developing a roll-to-roll process to produce flexible OLED displays. This is one of several possible printing technologies that can make soluble OLED panels possible.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer FEP Institute demonstrated new UV-emitting OLED devices that can be used as low-cost personal diagnostic devices. The German research institute demonstrated two OLED devices, one emitting in the near-UV and another in the green spectral range. Both can be integrated to sensor applications.

The Fraunhofer showed sample sensors that integrate both the OLED deices and photo-detectors with tunable spectral characteristics. The green OLED is a top-emitting OLED that has a thin-film optical filter and thin-film encapsulation - so that a sample substrate can be brought to be very close to the excitation source.

An LG Display researcher revealed that the company is developing a roll-to-roll process to produce flexible OLED displays. LG says this will enable them to make very flexible displays and reduce production costs.

LG Display also seeks to replace the aluminum electrodes with copper ones. This will again decrease costs and will also enable higher-resolution displays. There are some concerns with copper electrodes over environmental hazards but LGD apparently resolved those issues.

Deposition equipment maker SolMateS developed a patented 'soft-landing' method ITO deposition, specially tailored for OLED panels. The soft-landing technique is based on SolMateS's pulsed laser deposition (PLD) process, and it enables a fully-functional ITO layer directly on the organic materials, at room temperature.

The company reports that they managed to deposit an ITO on a transparent OLED that features a transparency of 80% with similar functional specifications compared to standard OLEDs (with non-transparent Aluminum electrode).