Technical / Research - Page 50

The Holst Centre and Rolic Technology have entered into a research partnership on protective moisture barriers for flexible electronics applications such as OLED and OPV. Rolic will develop new materials that will enable commercialization of of high-end flexible barriers and solutions for improved light out-coupling.

The Holst Centre aims to develop this thin film barrier fabrication technology for sheet-to-sheet (S2S) application as well as roll-to-roll (R2R). The focus of this projects seems to be OLED lighting, but this will also apply to OLED displays and OPV panels. In the photo above (sent by the Holst Centre) you can see an OLED panel with black spot defects (left), and the same panel, protected by a thin film barrier, without defects. The panels themselves are Philips Lumiblade OLED lighting panels, made on rigid glass.

Google filed an interesting patent in 2012, in which they suggest to reduce the image on a screen when the device is idle. The idea is that when the user is not active, the display size is slowly reduced, until it is invisible. The patent specifically says that this is useful on OLED displays - as it would save power and still present a somewhat useful image to the user.

STMicroelectronics announced it is going to collaborate with MicroOLED and help the company develop and produce OLED microdisplays. STM will also invest €6 million in MicroOLED.

According to the release, ST's IP portfolio and manufacturing technology will enable MicroOLED to broaden the range of their products and target more applications. ST will also help MicroOLED to integrate more functions into the microdisplay (functions that are currently handled by external controllers) - which will enable the final solution to be simpler and cheaper.

Plextronics and the Holst Centre are going to partner on research towards flexible OLED lighting, with an aim to improve the scaling of lab device performance to large area OLED lighting and signage devices.

Plextronics will provide its Plexcore hole injection and hole transport inks to the Holst Center shared research program. Those inks will be used to create functional OLED demonstrators. Plextronics will benefit from the research result - and will be able to further optimize their products.

Bruker announced a new photoconductive atomic-force Microscopy (pcAFM) module for the Dimension Icon platform. The new modules enables sample illumination while performing nanoscale electrical characterization. Bruker says that the new module (combined with their PeakForce TUNA technology) enables the highest resolution photoconductivity and nanomechanical mapping for OLED (or OPV) device samples.

The new modules provides uniform backside illumination and can be fiber coupled to industry-standard solar simulators for OPV testing. It is compatible with Bruker’s turnkey 1ppm glove box configuration.

In order to have a truly flexible device, a flexible OLED display is not enough - all the rest of the components must also be flexible. Researchers from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Institute (KAIST) have managed to develop a high-performance Lithium-ion flexible battery.

The researchers structured the Lithium-Ion with high density inorganic thin films by using a universal transfer approach. They fabricated the battery on a mica substrate (at high annealing temperature) and then transferred it onto polymer substrates using a simple physical delamination of sacrificial substrates. They are currently trying to use a laser lift-off technology to facilitate the mass production such batteries and also enable stacking the structures to enhance the density.

Japan Display (the new small/medium display maker that merged Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba's businesses) announced it will join Kyushu University OPERA center in its OLED research project.

The OPERA center (or the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronic Research) project (titled "Challenges for superior organic EL devices and innovative materials for the devices") is very broad - from basic research to application and development, including synthesis of new luminescent materials, device fabrication and elementary technology for display panel production processing.

Update: according to the english version of the article, the 350ppi was achieved "in the lab", so it's not clear how close this is to commercialization. The article also suggests that Samsung is indeed moving away from LITI...

There's a report from Korea suggesting that Samsung managed to reach 350 ppi on an OLED display using FMM (Fine Metal Mask). Up until now Samsung focused on LITI to reach such high resolutions, but if this is true then Samsung can quickly apply this production process to their current AMOLED fabs.

Hopefully we'll hear more of this achievement if true soon. One of the major advantages of current LCDs over OLED panels is the higher possible density (Apple's Retina display for example reaches 326 ppi), so this may be a huge boost for OLEDs.

A couple of months ago we reported that LG Display is suspected of OLED technology theft from Samsung Display. Yesterday it was reported that 11 people, including a former SMD executive and several Samsung and LGD employees where charged in that case.

SMD held a press conference saying that it stands to lose billions of Korean Wons (a billion Won is about $850,000 US) from the leak, and wants LGD to formally apologize in that case. LGD also held a press conference, denying the accusation and saying it's not responsible for this leak, and in any case the companies use quite different OLED technology so it does not need SMD's tech (which is used to produce Direct Emission OLEDs, but LG is indeed using WGRB, or WOLED-CF based OLED panels).

Researchers from the University of Utah and the Israeli Technion developed a new kind of Spintronics OLED device known as a spin-polarized OLED, that can be brighter than regular OLEDs. This bipolar spin valve device is similar to regular spin valve, but it emits light rather than just adjusting the flow of electrical current through the valve. Using a magnetic field it's possible to align the spin of the electrons and the electron-holes in the organic materials, which then supports more current and become brighter.

The Spin OLED uses a cobalt and lanthanum strontium manganese oxideelectrodes, while the organic layer is a polymer known as deuterated-DOO-PPV (this is the emitter layer). The whole device is only 300 microns wide and tall, and just 40 nanometers thick.