Technical / Research - Page 42

Rolic opened a new development facility in the Netherlands focused on OLED technologies. This will accelerate the company's OLED development and bring them into production, in close cooperation with locally specialized production companies.

In September 2012 Rolic have entered into a research partnership with the Holst Centre, with an aim to develop protective moisture barriers (encapsulation) for flexible electronics applications such as OLED and OPV. As part of that partnership, Rolic are developing new materials that will enable commercialization of of high-end flexible barriers and solutions for improved light out-coupling. This new development center will focus on the implementation and commercialization of those research and development results.

France based Genes'Ink launched a new silver-based solvent conductive ink for digital and screen printing. One of the major application they are targeting is the printing of efficient and transparent electrodes on flexible substrates for OLED displays. In fact Genes'Ink says that this ink will work on most substrates and is ready to use. It is compatible with most print heads.

Genes'Ink technology is based on research done at the universities of Marseilles and Grenoble. They claim that their technology offers superior conductivity at a competitive price.

Audi, Philips, Automotive Lighting, Merck and the University of Cologne successfully concluded an OLED research project (called OLED 3D), and developed the world's first large-area 3D OLED car rear lighting panels and installed a prototype on an Audi TT.

A 3D OLED means that the OLEDs have a curved surface - not just in one direction. These are glass based panels. It's not flexible glass (like Corning's Willow glass), it's the regular glass Philips are using in their regular OLEDs, but curved. The material used (made by Merck) are soluble, and the production process is described as "web printing" by Philips (I'm not sure what is meant by that).

A few days ago we reported about new research from Dankook University (DKU) that developed the world's most efficient blue OLED emitter. Today I talked with Professor Lee Jun Yeob, who's in charge of that research at DKU, and he explained his research further.

It turns out that in that particular research, they developed a new host material for blue OLEDs, and not a new emitter. The 30.1% efficiency they quote is external quantum efficiency. The blue emitter itself is a phosphorescent OLED - a common emitter known as FIrpic (Iridium based). Universal Display were not involved in this work.

The German government launched a new 34 million Euro (about $44 million) two years project called OLYMP ("Organic Light-emitting sYstems based on energy and cost-efficient Materials and Processes") that aims to improve OLED lighting efficiency and lifetime. 

The project partners are Osram (the project coordinator), Merck, BJB, LEDON, KG and Trilux. It follows a complete approach that covers all value-creation levels.

Update: we discussed this research with Professor Lee Jun Yeob, who's in charge of that research at DKU, and he explained his research further.

Researchers from Dankook University's Center for Photofunctional Energy Materials (DKU CPEM) developed what they claim is the world's most efficient blue OLED emitter (30.1% luminous efficiency). That's the highest efficiency OLEDs can reach in theory. The blue OLED is made from indolopyridines.

The team at DKU has been working on blue OLEDs since 2008. In 2009 they achieved an efficiency of 18.4%, and in 2011 they announced blue OLEDs with 25.4% efficiency. Now they announce this new breakthrough. Of course it remains to be seen whether this new material can be commercialized and what are its other features (mainly the lifetime).

Cambridge University's Graphene Centre and Plastic Logic have signed a research collaboration agreement on graphene in flexible plastic electronics. This strategic agreement has several activities and goals, one of them is to develop graphene as a transparent, highly conductive layer for plastic backplanes for unbreakable LCD and flexible OLED displays.

Flexible E Ink panel by plastic logic

The two other research goals are to develop new transistor structures that use graphene-like materials as the active layer and to exploit the commercialization of graphene for flexible electronics.

Sumitomo Chemical announced it has developed a new PLED inkjet-printing technology that achieves 423 PPI on glass substrates sized 370x470 mm. We don't have more information about Sumitomo's new production process, but apparently it isn't ready for commercialization yet as the company says they will "continue to improve the performance and process of PLED materials".

Panasonic printed P-OLED 56-inch OLED prototype

Panasonic used Sumitomo's PLED materials in their 56" 4K2K printed OLED TV prototype shown at CES 2013. Panasonic and Sumitomo has been collaborating on OLED TVs since 2009. The companies hope that ink-jet printing will enable them to lower the production costs of OLED panels compared to evaporation based production. Panasonic aims to launch their first OLED TVs in 2015. The company is collaborating with Sony, and may setup a production-JV together (although if this happens, it's not clear which production technology will be used).

Peratech announced an innovative new touch screen technology for OLED displays. The QTC Ultra Sensor is a pressure-based touch technology, that is applied behind the display. Regular touch layers are transparent films placed in front of displays, which reduce the light output (brightness). This new sensor is accurate, low on power and supports multi-touch and can also sense the amount of pressure.

Pertech says that the new sensor can be used for OLED and e-paper displays, as these can actually be pressed (unlike LCD panels, in which pressing them is not advisable). It doesn't have a to be a flexible OLED, it works behind glass - and a deflection of a micron or so all that is needed for QTC Ultra to sense the touch.

Novaled and 4JET Technologies has jointly developed a new laser process called SLAM (Selective Layer Modification) for OLED customization and optimization. SLAM allows defined customization or grey scaling and it can also be used to optimize lighting density and to isolate short circuits.

4JET says that SLAM can be used to create OLED signage solutions with individual logos or patterns. Basically this creates structured OLEDs (like we've seen from Philips, Fraunhofer, UDC and others) after the manufacturing process.