Technical / Research - Page 70

Last week we reported about LG Display's pilot 8-Gen OLED TV line, but we didn't have all the details (the original text was in Korean). Now we got a good translation and new info. According to the report, LGD has indeed begun to build the 8-Gen line and is currently installing equipment. Production is scheduled by the end of 2011. The OLED TV line is built in Paju in the same building as LG's 4.5-Gen fab that has started to manufacture AMOLEDs last month.

LG's 8-Gen line will produce 2,200 x 2,500 mm glass substrates which will be cut in two. The monthly capacity will be 24,000 substrates, or 72,000 55" OLED TV panels (although LG also plans to produce 31" panels later on). This of course assumes 100% yield - but the actual yield at first will be much lower.

Image Portal are selling their OLED related patents - which will be auctioned off at ICAP Ocean Tomo's Spring 2011 Live IP Auction on March 31, 2011 in New York City. Basically their invention is using several small OLED display tiles to create one large, seamless and continuous OLED display. This is achieved by making the edges of the tiles tilted at an angle and so the remaining portion is kept underneath the display area of an adjacent tile and is used for electrical connections.

Using smaller OLED tiles to create a large display is not a new idea (that's how Mitsubishi's Diamond Vision OLED screens work) - but here the company is describing a display in which you won't be able to see the seams between the display.

Update: the video was removed from the web

Yesterday we posted about the Fraunhofer Institute's bi-directional OLED microdisplay, and today we found a nice video showing it in action (in German). And here's a nice photo of Dr. Uwe Vogel, a business unit manager at the Fraunhofer Institute, showing a demo of this interesting device:

Update: here's a nice video (in German) showing the bidirectional OLED in action.

The Fraunhofer Institute announced their bidirectional OLED on CMOS microdisplay back in 2009. The idea is to have an OLED display and a camera on the same chip by integrating photodiodes between the OLED pixels. On March 22rd (at the Smart Systems Integration 2011 exhibition in Dresden, Germany) they will demo the system for the first time.

Fraunhofer's demo chip includes a monochrome AMOLED display (320x240) and a 160x120 monochrome camera. The brightness is 15,000 cd/m² and the chip size is 0.6" diagonal. They are also working on higher resolution displays (VGA and above) and small chip sizes (0.5").

Researchers from the Korea Advance Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) developed a new plastic-based film with glass fibers that is transparent, flexible and heat resistant. The heat expansion index (13ppm/oC) is similar to that of glass fiber (9ppm/oC) and so it can be used for displays (LCD and OLEDs) and solar cells at over 250oC.

Researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed a new Graphene-based technology that can be used to create OLED displays. Originally they used the new technology to create flexible rechargeable batteries. 

It's not clear from the original article how can this be used exactly to enhance OLEDs...

Here's a nice video showing LG's new NOVA LCD display side by side with a Super AMOLED (a Galaxy S phone) and Apple's iPhone 4 Retina Display (which is also an LCD). LG says that the NOVA displays are 50% brighter than the LCD and will consume about half the power than an AMOLED display on a white screen.

Samsung developed a new 5.2" glasses-free 3D AMOLED panel for mobile applications. Samsung uses a six-subpixel structured white OLED with color filters. The 3D is achieved using fixed parallax barriers and the AMOLED panel features only about 5% crosstalk and is only 1mm thick.

Samsung will present this new panel at SID 2011 (May 15-21). There will be a lot of other OLED presentations and new devices shown at SID.

C3Nano announced a $3.2 million venture-capital round-A financing. C3Nano is an early stage startup (a spin-out from Professor Zhenan Bao's chemical engineering lab at Stanford University) developing a new proprietary hybrid carbon nanotube (CNT) based transparent electrode ink and film.

C3Nano's new material can be used as a low-cost alternative for ITO in flexible OLEDs, solar cells and other applications. The company claims that their material is solution-coated and printable and is more durable, flexible and transparent than ITO.

Kaneka announced that it will start accepting orders for OLED lighting panels on March 22nd, 2011 in Japan (and later in April in Europe). Kaneka will offer OLED square panels in five colors (warm white, red, orange, blue and green). The panels will be dimmable (in the range from 1,000cd/m² to 5,000cd/m²).

Kaneka's OLED panels will cost around ¥2 million (approx $24,000) per square meter - and the company believes that the price will drop to ¥200,000 ($2,400) next year and to ¥50,000 ($600) or less by 2020. Production capacity in 2011 will be 10,000m² - and this will grow to 100,000m² in 2015. Kaneka panels will not be very efficient - around 20lm/W and will offer around 10,000 hours lifetime. But the company plans to improve this to about 60lm/W and 25,000 by 2014.