Technical / Research - Page 88

Nippon Seiki has developed new technology that enabled 75% reduction in power consumption for PMOLED displays. They have already commercialized this with a 0.8" green monochrome OLED panel that will be shipping in samples this month. The company also plans to develop panels of other colors including white. It's not clear whether this technology can also be used to make AMOLED panels more efficient.

new green PMOLED vs regular PMOLED

Nippon Seiki says taht the new panel is as efficient as a LED-backlit LCD, and has the same visibility as their previous PMOLED panels. The lower power consumption was realized by making improvements to the structure of an organic EL element, production processes and manufacturing management.

We have some more information about Linde's group and Shanghai University flexible OLED project. It turns out that the packaging and encapsulation is just the first phase, and should be completed by the end of 2010. In the second phase they will develop OLED materials (this will take 2-3 years). In the 2nd phase they will also work with TFT-LCD manufacturers to test volume production of the new OLED designs.

Linde themselves want to sell gases for OLED production, but they also want to get the OLED technology itself to market. They could sell the OLED technology itself via a technology transfer.

Update: the University removed the guide...

Here's something for you: Make your own OLEDs at home. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin has published a nice DIY guide for OLEDs: using a fan, duct tape, glass and power supply. And some stock of Ru(bpy)₃](BF₄)_2...

This is rather cool and reminds me of that MIT professor who showed us how OLEDs work using a pickle...

The Holst Centre has released a new proprietary roll-to-roll (R2R) sintering platform for fast and low-temperature curing of printed conductive structures. The center is progressing towards a complete tool set for R2R manufacturing and can be used for plastic electronics such as flexible OLEDs, organic PV solar cells and more. Holst' line now includes printing, coating, drying and lamination stages in addition to the new sintering unit. A vacuum deposition stage is currently in development.

Screen printed structures on foil photo

High web speeds and low temperatures are key elements for R2R manufacturing of plastic electronics. The sintering platform uses a new photonic sintering process, developed by Holst Centre, which heats only the printed target material rather than the whole carrier substrate. The tool can sinter printed conductive structures in less than a second, which is already enabling a fast throughput speed of over 5 meters/minute. It also works at significantly lower temperatures than traditional sintering techniques, preventing distortion of the carrier substrates and reducing energy costs.

Linde Group and Shanghai University announced today that they will partner to develop new advanced packaging solutions for flexible displays (especially OLEDs) to enhance product quality and cost efficiencies. Linde has invested EUR 80,000 in the first phase of this project.

They aim to develop a new generation of thin-film encapsulation material and packaging solutions for the manufacturing of displays: single and composite structures of thin-film encapsulation materials and related gas application techniques.

LG Group has decided on four R&D technologies to focus on: lighting, solar cells, next-gen batteries and integrated heating/ventilation/air-condition systems. The lighting technologies will include LED lighting and OLED Lighting materials, developed by LG Chem. LG Chem have already announced their plans to develop OLED lighting materials and panels, and hope to start production in 2H 2010.

Technocorp Energy (formed by ex-Kodak employees) will license Kodak's OLED Lighting technology from Global OLED Technology (LG's company that holds the 2,000 OLED patents bought from Kodak). Technocorp plan is to produce efficient OLED panels (70lm/W) at $64/m². This will take time and a lot of effort of course, and the company is looking for funding, partners and joint-ventures to achieve this goal.

Researchers at Stanford University have successfully developed a brand new concept of OLEDs with a few nanometer of graphene as transparent conductor. This paved the way for inexpensive mass production of OLEDs on large-area low-cost flexible plastic substrate, which could be rolled up like wallpaper and virtually applied to anywhere you want. The researchers say that Graphene has the potential to be transparent, high-performance, highly conductive and cheaper by several orders of magnitude than current ITO based solutions. Interestingly just a few weeks ago we reported that Graphene can be used to make organic lighting devices, too.

Graphene OLED

Traditionally, indium tin oxide (ITO) is used in OLEDs, but indium is rare, expensive and difficult to recycle. Scientists have been actively searching for an alternative candidate.

The next generation of optoelectronic devices requires transparent conductive electrodes to be lightweight, flexible, cheap, environmental attractive, and compatible with large-scale manufacturing methods. Graphene (a single layer of graphite) is becoming a very promising candidate due to its unique electrical and optical properties. Very recently, Junbo Wu et al., researchers at Stanford University, successfully demonstrated the application of graphene in OLEDs for the first time.

Samsung are showing a new transparent AMOLED called "Digital Window" at CeBIT:

Remember Samsung's flexible OLED for ID cards or passports? Bundesdruckerei is showing their e-passport that uses that AMOLED display at CeBIT. It still says "future product", but it seems to get getting closer to production every time we see it.

The display is a flexible 2" QVGA (240x320), 260K color OLED with a 10,000:1 contrast ratio. It is very low on power, and actually uses the RF power from the contactless reader - there's no battery at all here.