Universal Display and Sumitomo Chemical signed an OLED Technology License Agreement. UDC granted Sumitomo license rights to manufacture and sell solution-processed OLED lighting products. The agreement runs for the life of Universal Display’s relevant intellectual property rights.
Sumitomo aims to use UDC's technologies to increase the efficacy of their PLED lighting panels. The company will "explore business opportunities in lighting applications that take their printed polymer OLED technology to the next generation lighting.
Sumitomo has been developing PLED based lighting products for a while. They announced plans to start mass production dual-colors panels (which are produced using printing technologies) in early 2014, but this never materialized. Perhaps now using UDC's technologies those PLED panels will finally hit the market. The company previously achieved an efficiency of 42 lm/W, it'll be interesting to see what kind of efficiency will be enabled now.
Sumitomo is also developing PLED materials for display applications, but these won't be coverered by this new agreement. A few days ago Kateeva and Sumitomo announced a non-exclusive key partnership to pair Sumitomo's materials to Kateeva's YieldJet OLED ink-jet printing platform.
