Technical / Research - Page 67

Update: we learned that RiTDisplay have started to mass produce those AMOLEDs and have already found some smartphone clients.

IGNIS Innovation, unveiled a new 3.47" 320x480 AMOLED made on an amorphous silicon backplane (a-Si). The new display uses INGIS' new AdMo compensation technology and is made by RiTdisplay.

Today all AMOLEDs are made on LTPS backplanes. Ignis' solution uses a-Si which is cheaper but has stability issues. Ignis says that their new AdMo technology eliminates those issues - and makes the a-Si made AMOLED equivalent in performance to LTPS AMOLEDs. Ignis says that "This opens the door for RiTdisplay and other manufacturers to make state-of-the-art AMOLED displays using existing amorphous silicon equipment" - but they haven't announced when and if RiTDisplay (or other companies) plan to start using the technology.

Universal Display and the Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University (ASU) have successfully fabricated full-color, flexible AMOLED display prototypes that use the FDC's bond/de-bond manufacturing process. The new display use UDC's PHOLED materials and the new single-layer encapsulation technology. The OLED are made on DuPont Teijin Films Teonex polyester film.

The displays made are 3.8" in size and offer QVGA (320x240) resolution. They produced several displays, some on LTPS and some on IGzO backplanes.

AGC developed the world's thinnest flexible glass sheet - at only 0.1mm. The new glass is made from alkali-free glass and is manufactured using the float process. AGC says that this glass can be used in next-generation OLED displays and lighting panels.

Researchers from the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology in South Korea developed a new seamless foldable touch AMOLED display, that can fold in half without showing a visible crease. Samsung says that current research is mostly geared toward flexible/bendable displays, but a display that can be folded in half is great for making a large display in a portable form.

To make the seamless display, the team used two AMOLED panels, silicone rubber, a glass cover and a modular case. Their prototype was folded 100,000 times - and still the brightness at center of the display (where the two panels meet) decreased by just 6% - which is hardly visible by a human eye.

Novaled announced that it has developed a new efficient (36 lm/W) fluorescent white OLED, which the company claims is the world's most power efficient white OLED structure. Novaled used their own proprietary organic materials and a new flat light outcoupling method of extraction and achieved an increase in light emission by more than 80%, with good color rendering. Novaled's new structure also has an improved light angular dependence.

Here's more technical info from Novaled's press release: 

Samsung Mobile Display started producing AMOLED panels in their new 5.5-Gen (1,300x1,500mm) fab in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, South Korea. This is actually two months ahead of schedule. The official celebration will take place next month.

Samsung 5.5-gen fab groundbreaking ceremony

This is just the first line in Samsung's new fab - which will produce 24,000 substrates a month. The next stage (line 2) is scheduled for the end of 2011 (and will double the capacity to 48,000 monthly substrates). The third line is planned for the first half of 2012, and this will bring monthly capacity to 100,000 substrates. Total investment for this new fab is around $2.2 billion.

The Fast2Light project aims to develop novel, cost-effective, high-throughput, roll-to-roll, large area deposition processes for fabricating P-OLEDs for lighting. The project also aims to minimize the potential environmental impact at this product design stage, as well as analyse in depth the repercussions throughout the life cycle, including the end of useful life stage.

Spain's Gaiker-I4K announced a research activity as part of Fast2Light that will study the identification, development and adaptation of innovative treatment processes for OLED, taking into account both mechanical and chemical recycling technologies. Gaiker-I4K will also carry out a life cycle analysis of the OLEDs developed during the project. The research will be concluded in August 2011.

Caledon Controls announced that they will co-develop their PDIM (Pre-Deposited Images in Metal on plastic film) technology to be used as transparent conductor for OLED lighting together with the University of Toronto. This is the same team that discovered that using chlorine can drastically reduce OLED device complexity and improve its efficiency.

PDIM film is patterned with a thin (posted about this film and it's possible usages for OLEDs back in January 2011.

Acuity Brands launched two OLED luminaries, the company's first. The two new products (called Kindred and Revel) are designed for indoor, ambient applications. Planned availability is Q1 2012. The company will show the new OLED lighting products at the LightFair International 2011 Tradeshow and Conference (May 17-19, 2011).

The Kindred (shown above) is contemporary-styled lamp and it's "engineered to provide a room with individualized canopies of light, blurring the lines between architecture and lighting". The Kindred includes 45 OLED panels that output 3060 Lumens at 58 Watts (53lm/w). The lifetime is 15,000 hours (L70).

Cambridge Display (CDT) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) Organic Nano Device Laboratory (ONDL) signed a five year intellectual property (IP) pipeline licensing agreement to commercialize the innovations arising from NUS's polymer-OLED (PLED) research.

Under the terms of this agreement, CDT will be able to access new innovations from ONDL research and take licenses in existing and new IPs in PLED displays and lighting, solar cells and thin film transistor circuits. CDT will pay royalties to the NUS if/when they commercialize these activities.