Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) has made a new PMOLED panel using gravure printing technology. DNP used P-OLED inks, on a glass substrate. The drive voltage of the OLED panels is 12V, with a luminance as high as 100cd/m2.
DNP gravure-printed PMOLEDDNP made two prototypes (shown above) - 192x32mm (32x192 resolution) and 110x37mm (32x96 resolution). Both are 1.4mm thick.
CDT is one of the leaders in OLED research, focusing on Polymer-based OLEDs (PLEDs, also called P-OLEDs). While these OLEDs are lagging behind small-molecule OLEDs in current products (all AMOLEDs today are based on SM-OLEDs), some companies believe that PLEDs are actually the better tech for the future.
CDT's CEO, David Fyfe has agreed to answer a few questions we had on CDT's technology. David joined CDT in 2000 as Chairman and CEO. David saw CDT go public in 2004, and then negotiated the sale of CDT to Sumitomo for $285 million (in September 2007). David is also a director of Soligie, an electronics printing company, Acal Energy, a fuel cell technology developer and the Plastic Electronics Foundation.
Q: David - thanks for agreeing to do this interview. Since the Sumitomo acquisition, CDT has been rather quiet... can you give us an update on where's the company now, and where's it is headed?
Since the merger of CDT into Sumitomo Chemical in September 2007, CDT has grown substantially and received considerable capital investment to enable it to remain a leading developer of PLED technology. It works very closely with SCC laboratories in Japan and most recently has been transferring manufacturing process knowhow to SCC's own PLED manufacturing development line, recently commissioned at Ehime on Shikoku, Japan. CDT in partnership with SCC has made large strides in materials lifetimes and efficiencies. SCC prefers to take a lower profile in announcing these advances since its business model is to work with selected display maker partners in a collaborative, confidential relationship. We have also made big strides in the development of top emitting structures and in printing PLED displays. SCC's strategy is that CDT will continue to be its leading development center for PLED technology with Ehime scaling process technology to a yielding process status. CDT is also working very closely with Semprius of North Carolina, USA to develop single crystal silicon TFT structures on which PLED devices can be deposited and driven using Semprius’ proprietary stamping technology.
Q: It seems that OLED displays are finally entering the mainstream - we hear of new devices (mainly by Samsung, but also from Sony, Microsoft, LG and others) almost daily. What are your thoughts on this? what are the challenges that still exist for OLEDs?
Sony broke the logjam of resistance to the adoption of OLED in large displays by major display makers with the introduction of its XEL-1 11 OLED TV in 2007. Samsung SDI’s investment in small screen OLED production in 2007, based on LTPS backplanes was another major impetus. Since then, Chi Mei has brought on small OLED screen capacity, TMD (now wholly owned by Toshiba) has built an OLED line to manufacture small screens, LG Display will start up their Gen 3.5 line late this year and if press reports are to be believed, Toppoly will commission their capacity with Nokia as a lead customer and Panasonic have a major OLED development program for large OLED displays.
Scientists from the National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, designed an OLED that can display color temperatures between 2300K and 8200K - covering the entire range of sunlight during the day. The color temperature is controlled using different voltage.
That's the first time this has been achieved - and no other light source can have that kind of color range. They used fluorescent OLEDs, but plan to switch to phosphorescent, to make it more efficient.
A research team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has discovered a way to make OLEDs more efficient. This new method can be used for flexible OLEDs, too.
The idea is to use surface plasmon. Silver nanoparticles were thermally deposited in a high vacuum on cathode. Since plasmons provide a strong oscillator decay channel, time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) results displayed a 75% increased emission rate, and continuous wave PL results showed a twofold enhanced intensity.
We're happy to announce a new addition to the Metalgrass site network: Graphene-Info. Graphene is a sheet, one-atom-thick of carbon atom, in a honeycomb crystal lattice. If you use many layers of graphene, stacked one on top of the other, you’ll get Graphite. Graphene has many uses - Spintronics, sensors, ICs (for example a transparent backplane for OLEDs), ultra-capacitors and more.
We hope you'll enjoy the new site...
Researchers (led by Johnson Chuang from the Simon Fraser University in Canada) have shown that if you choose the color set on an OLED display, you can save up to 40% of the power required.
Different colors in OLED require different power - for example yellow is more efficient than Magenta, at the same brightness.
This can be useful, if you want to get better battery life over display quality. Here's an example of a tooth image:
The left image (tooth) is using standard colors, and the right image is using colors that require 40% less energy on an OLED. The quality is obviously better with standard colors, but almost all the details are preserved. This can be used for applications such as medical or military I guess, where power saving is key.
The OLED100.eu project is a European 3-year OLED lighting project. The 30M$ project is a followup to the OLLA project, ended in June 2008, and it is lead by Philips, OSRAM, Siemens, Novaled and the Franhofer IPMS.
Dr. Stefan Grabowsky, the project's manager has been kind enough to talk to us, answer a few questions and give us more info on the project. Dr. Stefan has a Ph.D in Physics, from the University of Duisburg. In 2000 he joined Philips Research labs. He's working on OLEDs for several years now, with a focus on device physics and OLED stack development. Since September 2008 he is the project manager for OLED100.eu.
Q: Stefan, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Can you tell us a bit about OLED100.eu?
OLED100.eu is an European integrated research project that has brought together a consortium of experts from leading industry and academic organizations to accelerate the development of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technologies. It has received â¬12.5 million funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme to form the technological basis for efficient OLED applications for the general lighting industry in Europe.
Large-area OLED from Philips
EEtimes says that GE will start volume production of flexible OLED light panels in 2010. GE will print the OLEDs on polymer substrate, and use their ultra-high barrier coating. GE says that they managed to lower production cost by using roll-to-roll printing, and inexpensive substrates (the polymer ones).
GE are also thinking about possible new designs, and have released this video a month ago, which includes several flexible OLED light designs by art students, including wearable OLEDs for emergency safety gear, illuminated stairs, walls and signs in stores and a nice "wall peel" OLED lamp.
Junji Kido, a professor from the Yamagata University in Japan has formed a new company, called Organic Lighting, to work on white OLEDs. The company's capital is only about 130,000$ currently, and it was setup in the Yamagata Universit'yes Venture Business Laboratory.
Organic Lighting plans to have equipment on the market by the beginning of 2010. It will not have its own factory. They also have plans for OLED emergency lights for public places. They hope to reach several tens of millions of US$ in revenue by 2014.
Professor Junji Kido is the inventor of the first white OLED.
Last month Seiko Epson has unveiled a new inkjet-printing technology for OLEDs, suitable for large sized panels. We have talked to Satoru Miyashita, General Manager of Seiko Epson's Core Technology Development Center about this new technology and their plans for OLED production.
Q: You have shown a new ink-jet based OLED technology. You say it will enable 37" or larger HD-OLED TVs. Do you have any plans to actually make such TVs? When do you think products can be made with this new tech?
Epson is currently considering a variety of options regarding the commercialization of this technology, but at this point no specific announcements have been made about plans. We see 2012 as being the year that 37"+ OLED TVs will be launched by various makers, and 2015 as the year that sales will really take off for this market.
Espon 14-inch Inkjet processed OLED
