Technical / Research - Page 77

Back in January we reported the UDC and Moser Baer will build an OLED Lighting pilot production line, based around Universal Display's PH-OLED technology. $8.3 million was awarded by the DOE for this project (UDC will receive $4 million out of it). The first pilot line (out of two) will begin operation in 2011.

Prototype OLED lamps by UDC

Today we have some new information about this interesting project. The entire investment will be $20 million, with Moser Baer Technologies (the US division of Moser Baer) investing $11.5 million to purchase production equipment. The pilot line will be built in Canandaigua, New York at the Smart System Technology & Commercialization Center (or STC) in the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering's (CNSE). STC is in charge of building the cleanroom space for the pilot lines.

Universal Display announced today "significant advances" in the performance of its UniversalP2OLED solution-processible, phosphorescent OLED material systems. UDC reported that the solution-based system now approach the performance of vacuum-evaporated PHOLEDs.

The new green system feature 66 candelas per Ampere (cd/A) and 130,000 hours lifetime at 1000 nits luminance. That's about two times improvement from a year ago. The new red system offers 15 cd/A and 62,000 hours, and the light blue offers 18 cd/A and 5,000 hours. UDC has also demonstrated ink-jet printing with comparable performance to devices made by spin-coating.

Update: There are reports that Nemoptic declared bankruptcy, and the web site is now down. That's a shame, they seemed to have very interesting technology. Hopefully someone will pick it up and continue development...
 

Nemoptic has developed the world's first display that combines a color OLED with a monochrome Bistable Nematic LCD (Binem). The idea is that you can choose whether you want to have an OLED displays, or a e-paper like display, depending on the application and lighting condition (this somewhat reminds us of Pixel-Qi displays).

A Binem display, which is patented by Nemoptic offers the optical performance of a normal Nematic display but is still retains the image even without any power (i.e. it is bistable, like e-paper). Nemoptic displays are suitable for e-readers and other applications. Nemoptic claims that their displays offer a very high reflectance, a good contrast and good colors. They can also be made on flexible substrates - which means that the OLED/Binem display can probably be made flexible, too.

Universal Display announced that they delivered eight wrist-mounted OLED displays to the US Army. Those 4.3" QVGA full-color displays are based on UDC's phosphorescent OLED materials and are built on thin flexible metal foil. The backplane is an amorphous-Silicon (a-Si) TFT, fabricated by LG Display. The displays were designed by L-3 Display systems and "offer various advanced communications features, all integrated into a thin and rugged housing that comfortably fits around a soldier’s wrist".

These prototype were built as part of a US Department of Defense (DOD) funded program.

Two days ago we reported about a new OLED lamp design by D Signed, called Lamped. The OLED panels were made by the Fraunhofer Institute. Irena Kilibarda (the designer behind the lamp) sent us the technical details.

The OLED panels are 106x50mm in size, with a 91.6x41.6mm active area. The brightness is 1000 cd/m2, the color is 2900K (soft white). On the foot of the lamp (that is made of molded stainless steel and is heavier than the rest of the lamp) there are dimmer controls.

Roth & Rau MicroSystems will partner with the Holst Centre on barriers for flexible electronics. The two companies will develop and install a roll-to-roll PECVD deposition tool in the Holst Centre. This will be used for flexible OLED lighting and organic solar cells.

TDK is showing new PMOLED panels at Ceatec 2010. The first one is a 2" (320x240) transparent OLED with a 50% transmittance. TDK says that unlike AMOLEDs, the transmittance of PMOLEDs is not lowered by driver elements. TDK is using a driver chip made by Dialog Semiconductor, and says they can mass-produce this if device makers request it.

TDK is also showing 3.5" (256x64) flexible panels, only 3mm thick. There are two variants: a color one and a monochrome one. TDK is using a resin substrate, and the displays can be bent to a curvature radius of up to 25mm. The contrast, brightness and lifetime are "almost the same as TDK's existing glass-subtrate PMOLEDs". The OLED inside is a white emitter, with RGB-color filters. TDK will start mass production at the end of 2011.

Osram is building an OLED Lighting production line in Regensburg, Germany. The company will invest 50 million euros (around $70 million) in the production facility (it will have about 200 employees initially) and in research on LED applications. Commissioning of the production line is scheduled for mid-2011.

OSRAM ORBEOS

The company research will focus on the manufacturing process of the production line, and also in brightness, efficiency and lifetime of the OLED panels.

Kia is showing a new car concept called POP. It's an electric car that has a transparent OLED panel behind the steering wheel. The OLED displays the speed, battery charge and more information.

It's not really a 'heads-up-display' as it's rather low, but it still enables the driver eyes to be closer to the road when he views information compared to regular dashboard displays.

Astron Fiamm has created a new car concept (called Car.Bones) that uses OLED Lighting: headlights, inside-lighting, turn indicators, and more. Alessandro Dolcetta, Astron FIAMM's co-found says that "OLED opens up a new era of by Astron Fiamm products lighting ‘signatures’, and this light-modeling capacity enables us to help our clients and especially car manufacturers to create a endless variety of visual product offers."

Car.bones can be visited from the 2nd October to the 17th October at the Paris Auto show Mondial de l’Auto 2010. More photos of this OLED-Car concept be be seen below: