Technical / Research - Page 34

Sony announced a new 0.23" 640x400 (nHD+) OLED microdisplay aimed for wearable devices. The microdisplay features a pixel pitch of 7.8um and a 110% NTSC color gamut. Sony aims to ship this display in 2015.

Sony says that the new microdisplay, while being smaller (and with a lower resolution) compared to their current 0.5" product, it offers a higher performance. The contrast ratio has been improved from 10,000:1 to 100,000:1, the brightness enhanced from 200 to 800 cd/m² and the power consumption has been slashed from 400 to 140 mW. The viewing angle has also been improved.

Mitsui Chemicals announced that its Structbond XMF-T transparent OLED sealant is used in LGD's flexible OLED displays (the 6" 720p plastic-based flexible OLED as used in the G Flex curved smartphone).

Mitsui says that their sealing material offers high barrier properties, moisture resistance, transparency and process manageability.

IGNIS Innovation announced today that they are going to collaborate with Shenzhen China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) to develop a 5.5" HD AMOLED panel that will use Ignis's MaxLife Lite driving scheme.

The AMOLED panel will be produced by CSOT using an LTPS backplane. Ignis's MaxLife Lite will enable high yields, low cost, low-power consumption, and long life time. CSOT hopes that Ignis' technology will enable them to quickly ramp up production.

Pixelligent Technologies entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) with an aim to optimize the formulation for ORNL’s roll-to-roll process for OLED lighting devices.

Pixelligent says that this agreement will allow them to further optimize materials and formulations to demonstrate improved performance and cost for OLED lighting roll-to-roll processes. This project also gives Pixelligent access to the state-of-the-art facilities and world class expertise at ORNL.

In 2012 we posted about light-emitting electrochemical cells (LEC), a cheaper (but less efficient) flexible alternative to OLED lighting. Back then, three Universities (in Sweden and Denmark), involved with Polymer LEC (P-LEC) research, launched a company called LunaLEC to develop and commercialize the technology.

Now LunaLEC unveiled a new technology that can be used to fabricate 3D LECs in air using spray-spintering. This fault-tolerant fabrication technique can produce multi colored large-area emission patterns via sequential deposition of different inks based on identical solvents. The technique can also be used to deposit LECs on complex-shaped surfaces - for example the fork you see above. This is done in-air without the use of cleanrooms.

Switzerland based Fluxim, providing leading simulation and measurement technology to the OLED and solar cell industry, announces two product releases and two training events. Following is a sponsored message from Fluxim.

Fluxim is Launching SETFOS 4.0 with a New Light Scattering Module for Assessing the OLED Light Outcoupling Enhancement

After extended development and testing effort, Fluxim is going to release a new module of the simulator SETFOS in the beginning of June 2014 to simulate light scattering in OLEDs and solar cells. Fluxim believes that their customers can strongly take advantage from this major improvement as the new module makes it easy to quantify the impact of light outcoupling enhancement structures. Please write to info@fluxim.com to obtain further information today.

Researchers from UCLA developed an amorphous oxide semiconductor thin-film transistors (backplane) for LCD and OLED displays. The transistors were produced using a solution process and feature a specially-designed layer with ultra-high density and high electron mobility.

The researchers say that their new process does not require a clean room or expensive equipment, and so can enable a high-performance device that is simple and cheap to produce. The new device offers an electron mobility that is 10 to 20 times greater than a-Si TFTs. It is composed of indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) and indium tin zinc oxide, (ITZO).

Taiwan's ITRI institute developed a new technology (which they call Image Lighting) that enables OLED lighting to be patterned with grayscale images (static of course - this is not an OLED display as such).

ITRI says that their technology allows for more than 200 levels of grayscale, which results in great photo quality. ITRI's process is easy and scalable and will fit nicely within a normal OLED lighting production process. ITRI also plans to develop the technology further to enable full color image lighting panels.

Merck announced that the PrintOLED project successfully concluded. During the project, the partners investigate several technologies (such as gravure, inkjet printing, slot-die coating and others) and were able to demonstrated OLEDs with homogeneously coated active areas of 10 cm² and 27 cm² by classic gravure printing and slot die coating (at least two of the layers were processed from solution).

Merck says that printing two organic layers one on top of the other was a major challenge. The partners achieved significant improvements with specific material sequences. They say that they managed to print with speeds of up to 3 m/s semiconducting OLED layers with a homogeneity meeting the quality standards of industrial-scale OLED production. The knowledge was also applied to OPV and sDSC solar cells.

Fraunhofer COMEDD collaborated with Orthogonal Inc to develop a new approach for OLED micro-structuring. The new patented technology, called Orthogonal Photolithography allows direct patterning of organic material on CMOS-backplanes.

This technology can enable high-brightness (5000 cd/m²) high-resolution OLED microdisplays. This is because it can be used to create direct-emission OLED microdisplays. All current microdipslays on the market use white OLED subpixels with color filters. Fraunhofer is also developing direct-emission OLED microdisplays using flash-mask-transfer-lithography (FMTL) technology.