Technical / Research - Page 92

Showa Denko announced that it has signed a license agreement for OLED Lighting technology with Universal Display. Showa Denko will be able to integrate Universal Display’s proprietary UniversalPHOLED phosphorescent and other OLED technologies into Showa Denko’s white OLED lighting
products fabricated by solution-processing methods. Under the agreement, UDC will get license fees and running royalties.

Showa Denko has been developing polymer-based white OLEDs for use with
coating-type manufacturing equipment that may enable the cost-effective
production of large-area lighting panels. Through their development of a
new device structure and the use of phosphorescent OLED technology and
materials, the company recently demonstrated a white OLED lighting device with 30 lumens per Watt.

UPDATE: it turns out that this is not an OLED dress at all! It is using EL panels, made by Elumin8 back in 2005. Here's more information...

UK's PolyPhotonix is showing an 'OLED Dress', designed by Gareth Pugh. The dress was exhibited at the launch of the UK's "Plastic Electronics Strategy' (the $32 million investment in plastic-electronics announced in July). The UK announced that by September 2010, they will begin prototype production of flexible OLED Lighting panels and low-cost long-life solar cells.

PolyPhotonix OLED dress

PolyPhotonix are working toward polymer-based OLED Lighting panels. Their first production line is already active (that's where they made the OLED panels for the dress).

In an interesting article by the Financial Times, both Idemitsu Kosan and Sumitomo executives estimate that "2012 will be the year when OLEDs hits the big times".

Idemitsu Kosan also says that they are working on a new way to 'spray' small-molecule OLED materials. The new method should be ready by 2015. Spraying OLEDs (instead of using vapor-deposition) will mean less material loss, and thus cheaper displays. It will also make it easier to fabricate large panels.

GE and Israel's Power Paper will jointly-develop self-powered (battery) OLED Lighting. The project will combine Power Paper's paper-thin, flexible batteries with GE's OLEDs.

GE says that the new OLED products will cost less, be more effective and will be reliable and shock-resistant.

Sim4tec has released a new version (v2.0) of their OLED simulation software, SimOLED. The software now
comes with two modules for electrical and optical simulations of OLED
key figures.

SimOLED Electric can be used to calculate quantities like current density and current efficiency and to look at spatially resolved values of e.g. electric field and exciton densities. SimOLED Optic provides information about spectrally and angularly resolved emission, color coordinates and quantities related to power
and external quantum efficiencies.

Both modules now contain features for automatic parameter variation and a completely redesigned tool for graphical representation of data. More information over at Sim4tec's site.

Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is showing a new flexible 4.1" color OLED display. They say that it's more flexible and 'softer' than their previous prototypes.

ITRI is also showing new e-paper displays.

The Fraunhofer IPMS announced plans to set up roll-to-roll OLED equipment for 30cm-wide metal foil substrate in December. The new equipment will allow films to be formed continuously. The institute does not have any encapsulation equipment yet.

Researchers from the University of Southern California has created a large functional array of transistors made using simple solution-processing methods from carbon nanotubes. These have been used to drive a simple 4" OLED display, and the group is now working towards a 'truly integrate' OLED display that is both flexible and transparent.

Carbon Nanotubes is a promising material for making control cibruit for displays - they are efficient, and can be used to make flexible and transparent displays. Now the USC researchers have found an 'easy' way to make large arrays of transistors with good performance.

Nippon Electric Glass is showing the world's slimmest OLED Lighting panel - only 100 micrometer thick, using their ultra-slim glass substrate. They say that the panel has a high-level gas barrier properties, and that it can be easily bent.

There's an interesting story on Philips Lighting plans over at Tech-On, which obviously includes OLED Lighting. Philips are already shipping samples for quite some time (here's our review). Philips say that currently their OLED has an emission efficiency of 10lm/W to 20lm/W.

Philips OLED panel

They have already achieved 80lm/W "in the lab", but it will take at least 3 years to achieve 50lm/W at the production level, and 5 years to go beyond that.