The US Department of Energy is funding new LED and OLED research with a 6.4M$ program. 1M$ of that program goes to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). They will develop new, stable materials for high-efficiency blue OLEDs.
Novaled announces a new 15x15 OLED device that has a 30lm/W power efficiency and 1,000 cd/m2 brightness. The OLED white light has a CIE color coordinates in line with the DOE energy star specifications. The lifetime is quoted as 20,000 hours.
The panel thickness is less than 2mm, and the light is a very high color rendering index (CRI) of 90. The perception of this light is similar to sunlight or what is delivered by incandescent bulbs. The achieved color coordinates of (0.44, 0.41) are inside the US Department of Energy (DoE) quadrangles at Illuminant A and even meet the more restrictive 7step MacAdams Ellispis around Illuminant A.
Novaled calls this new technology 'liternity OLED', which they want to start commercializing. It will allow upscaling to very large sizes.
Universal Display Corporation have been awarded a $1.65M two-year contract from the US Department of Energy to demonstrate thin, efficient white OLED lighting concept for under-cabinet applications.
UDC will deliver several under-cabinet lighting units to the DOE. each unit will have five 6"x6" white OLED panels, with a system efficiency of over 60 lumens per watt which is comparable to existing under-cabinet systems. The OLED lamps will be much thinner than anything available today, enabling new design concepts, and will make for easier installations.
UDC are also working on ceiling lamps, together with Armstrong, and have recently showed a video with the new 24" OLED lamps.
Researchers from Japan has created a new OLED with a liquid organic semiconducting layer (made out of ethylhexyl carbazole - EHCz) to transport charge. This can useful for making flexible OLEDs, and also improve reliability.
The liquid semiconductor can be used in curved structures, or even could be circulated or refilled into the active emitting
layer. This constant, fresh supply of semiconductors could improve
device reliability and reduce degradation.
Scientists from the independent Stanford Research Institute (SRI) have design a new efficient OLEDs using cavities - in fact the new OLEDs are five times as efficient as standard OLED (i.e. five times as much light per watt consumed). The green COLEDs (Cavity-OLEDs) achieved 80 lumens per watt, and the blue ones 30lumens per watt.
They used Polymer-OLEDs provided by SDK, and the team says that they are ready to make white light (by mixing red, green and blue OLEDs), and estimate that products based on this new tech could arrive as soon as next year.
Corning and the Soitec group have agreed to work on the development of high-performance silicon-on-glass (SiOG) substrates for OLED displays for mobiles.
Corning's silicon-on-glass technology, currently in development, is a thin, single-crystal silicon film applied to Corning display glass. This development is expected to produce an engineered substrate with outstanding electrical mobility and material uniformity, upon which electronic circuits can be easily applied by display manufacturers.
Soitec's proprietary Smart Cut⢠technology is used to transfer ultra-thin single crystal layers of wafer substrate material (such as silicon) onto another surface. This technique is used to fabricate more than 90 percent of SOI production wafers in the semiconductor industry.
The UK's printable electronics technology centre (or PETEC) has received a 20M GBP (about 32M$) investment from the UK's government and a regional fund (One North East). PETEC will double its facilities, hoping to begin a 15 billion GBP UK industry.
TOPLESS project OLED lamp prototypePETEC is working on several projects, including OLED displays and lighting and solar panels. One of these project is TOPLESS, working on OLED lighting. PolyPhotonix, who are working on OLED light therapy, are opening a production line at PETEC.
Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) has developed new, efficient, coated phosphorescent-polymer-based OLEDs. The new devices achieved about 40% in light output (the quantity of light emitted from light source, divided by electric power consumed.) - which they claim is the highest level in the world. The efficiency is 30 lm/W, and the lifetime is approximately 10,000 hours.
SDK says that OLED made by coating is attracting keen attention because it consists of a few layers formed by coating polymer without the use of vacuum, providing the opportunity for substantial cost reductions and for the production of large
area-emission panels in the future.
Solterra Renewable Technologies (wholly owned subsidiary of Hague Corp) today announced an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with the University of Arizona for the patented, intellectual property covering screen-printing techniques for OLED fabrication. Solterra's CEO Stephen Squires says that there are essential similarities between the screen-printing techniques to fabricate LEDs and the screen printing technology that Solterra is currently optimizing to print quantum dots to make thin-film solar cells.
Advantech has got a 15M$ investment to build a pilot line for their roll-to-roll OLED fabrication technology. Advantech will use the line to produce OLED TV backplanes, and Electronic Shelf Labels backplanes. They say their new technology will enable fabrication at "exceptionally low cost". Advantech already produced 4" monochrome AMOLED panels (shown below).
Advantech was founded by Dr. T. Peter Brody, inventor of the Active-Matrix, and they hope to revolutionize the OLED market. The current investment round comes from the Pan family (12M$) and from Shanghai Ventures (2.1M$). The Pan family has already invested 12M$ in previous rounds.
