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OLED TVs: Technology Advancements Thread

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#1 ·





This thread is for news about technological advancements in and commercial production of OLED TVs and OLED technology in general. It will be regularly updated with relevant news about leading-edge advancements.


Currently, it is the largest single repository in the world for OLED display news, device information and imagery.


Other threads in this group on the AVS Forum:
LCD TVs: Fab News Thread
LCD TVs: Market Price Stats Thread
LCD TVs: Technology Advancements Thread
Plasma TVs: Market Price Stats Thread
Background:
Wikipedia: OLEDs
History of OLED Technology
Video:
▪ Sony Moves a Step Closer to OEL TV (11" & 27") [ Stream / AVI / MKV : 6.6 MB ]
▪ Epson 40" OLED Display [ MKV : 0.8 MB ]
▪ Wil Wheaton praises Sony's 1,000,000:1 Contrast OLED TVs [ Stream / AVI / MKV : 5.2 MB ]

lemaroc.org: OLED Videos
takatv.com: OLED Videos
To start off, some recent and (surprisingly), not-so-recent news:

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Universal Display Corporation and Sony Corporation Announce Joint Development Agreement Aimed at Organic LED Television Monitors
18 April 2001


Universal Display Corporation (UDC) (Nasdaq: PANL PHLX: PNL) and Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE) have announced a joint development agreement for high efficiency active matrix Organic LED (OLED) display devices for use in large area monitor applications. Under the Agreement, the parties will develop active matrix OLED displays with extremely high power efficiency combining UDC's proprietary high efficiency electrophosphorescent materials and Sony's proprietary low temperature poly silicon active matrix OLED technology (TAC: Top emission Adaptive Current drive).


Sony has developed a 13-inch active matrix OLED display using its novel TAC technology. That display is a little thicker than a credit card and has the potential to replace the bulky TV tube. UDC's portfolio of innovative OLED technologies include its world record high efficiency electrophosphorescent material system, which can be up to four times more power efficient than conventional OLED systems; transparent cathodes, and flexible plastic display technologies. It has the sole and exclusive licensing rights to over 380 issued and pending OLED patents worldwide.


"The opportunity to work with the Sony team is a very exciting event. We believe that their vision of a thin, lightweight OLED television monitor is a dramatic confirmation of the essential attributes of OLED technology and their position as a premier developer of high quality large area consumer electronic display products," stated Steven V. Abramson, President and Chief Operating Officer of UDC.


Tetsuo Urabe, General Manager of Sony's OLED development department stated "UDC and their research partners have been developing extraordinary and innovative OLED technologies for more than 7 years and the combination of Sony's advanced AM-OLED technology and UDC's high expertise in OLED research and development will accelerate the realization of this revolutionary flat panel display technology for large area applications."


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Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology introduces world's largest polymer organic light-emitting diode display
16 April 2002




Display: Polymer Organic Light-Emitting Diode Display
Size: 17” diagonal
Pixel count: 1280 x 768 (XGA wide)
Grayscale/Color: 64 grayscale (6-bit RGB) / 262,144 colors
Brightness: 100-300 cd/m2
Contrast: 200:1 (dark room)


Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co., Ltd. (TMD) today announced the world's first full-color 17-inch XGA wide polymer organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display, a breakthrough display achieved forming a light-emitting polymer film on low temperature polysilicon thin film transistor (TFT).


OLED display data via an organic light-emitting diode in pixels formed on a TFT array. The display itself emits light and has no need of the backlight required by LCDs, opening the way to thinner, lighter display panels that consume less power. OLED displays also offer the faster response time required for motion pictures and support a wider viewing angle.


The newly developed 17-inch XGA wide OLED display was made possible by breakthroughs in ink-jet printing and solvent-material technologies for depositing a polymer film. Both advances can be applied to the achievement of large size, high resolution displays and efficient mass production without any need for a vacuum environment. The resulting display is the largest OLED display yet achieved and offers the highest resolution, 1280 x 768 pixels.


TMD expects OLED displays to find their initial market in cellular phones and small- and medium-sized PDAs, but development of a 17-inch wide OLED confirms application as larger displays for audio-visual equipment, including TVs.


The new display is on exhibit at Electronic Display Forum 2002 held at Tokyo Big Site, Tokyo, Japan from April 16-18, 2002.


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At the Society for Information Display (SID) show in Baltimore, two manufacturers claim to have built the largest organic LED display ever seen
29 May 2003




20-inch OLED


Organic LED displays were much in evidence at last week’s Society for Information Display (SID) show in Baltimore, US, with two companies claiming to have built the largest yet.

International Display Technology (IDTech), a joint venture between Chi Mei Optoelectronics of Taiwan and IBM Japan , demonstrated a 20 inch display driven by what it calls ‘super amorphous silicon’ technology. Meanwhile, Sony showed off its 24 inch screen, which consists of a 2 x 2 tiled array of OLED displays.


Unlike most OLED displays, the device developed by IDTech is based on amorphous silicon transistors. According to the company, this enables much lower fabrication costs than the polycrystalline transistors generally used in OLED technology.


Amorphous silicon is already used in liquid-crystal display (LCD) manufacture, and IDTech says that its development makes commercial production of OLED displays with existing TFT-LCD manufacturing facilities possible.


“TFT-LCD companies can easily transform their products into OLED without massive investment in new facilities. This will result in a very competitive production cost for OLED displays,” said the company.


IDTech also claims that its display consumes half the power of a typical high-end LCD, has better color saturation and a wider viewing angle. It features WXGA resolution (1280x768 pixels) and draws 25W power at 300 cd/m2.


Although substantially bigger at 24.2 inches, the active-matrix OLED display developed by Sony is actually four separate displays. However, the company says that its tiling technology makes the join between each display appear seamless. However, the resolution of the Sony display is slightly less at 1024 x 768 pixels.


Both companies say that their developments open the door to OLED displays being used in televisions.


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Epson Creates World's First Large Full-Color OLED Display Using Original Inkjet Technology
PDF
18 May 2004









Seiko Epson Corporation ("Epson") today announced that it has used its original inkjet printing technology to successfully develop the world's first large-screen (40-inch) full-color organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display prototype.


Self-luminescent OLED displays, which offer outstanding viewing characteristics, including high contrast, wide viewing angle, and fast response times, are widely seen as the leading candidate for the next generation of thin, lightweight displays. One of the major obstacles to their realization, however, has been the perceived difficulty of forming organic layers on large-sized TFT (thin film transistor) substrates. Thus the question of when fabrication processes for large-sized OLED flat panel displays would become technically feasible had been anyone's guess.


Epson has been actively working to develop and commercialize next-generation OLED displays. The company, long a leader in inkjet printers, has developed an original inkjet process for depositing organic layers on large-size TFT substrates. Using this adapted inkjet technology to form organic layers on large-size substrates in a simple process, Epson has now developed the world's largest (40-inch diagonal) full-color OLED display prototype.


By establishing an OLED display manufacturing system and process that can handle oversized substrates, Epson has beaten a path to large-size OLED displays, as well as to lower cost small- and medium-sized panels cut from larger TFT substrates.


Epson believes that the characteristics of OLED displays make them the ideal device for entertainment applications, whether in equipment for the road or living room. The company is thus gearing up towards commercialization in 2007.


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LG Philips lays claim to biggest OLED
19 October 2004






The company, which manufactures thin-film-transistor, or TFT, LCD screens in South Korea, unveiled a prototype 20.1-inch active matrix OLED display at the FPD International trade show in Japan on Tuesday.


It is based on "low-temperature polysilicon," a technique also used in TFT-LCD production, where active components are integrated across the display glass. This lets the OLED display be made using modifications of existing techniques and production lines. Because OLED displays do not need a separate backlight, the power consumption of the finished unit should be lower than that of an LCD counterpart.


LG Philips, a joint venture between LG Electronics and Royal Philips Electronics, wasn't able to provide full technical details of the device at the time of writing. According to reports, the OLED display contains 3 million pixels, suggesting that it has a resolution of 2,028 pixels by 1,536 pixels.


Until now, Samsung had the honor of having created the largest OLED display. In May it announced a 17-inch active matrix OLED display with a resolution of 1,600 pixels by 1,200 pixels.


Other companies have announced OLED displays that are larger than 20.1 inches, but these have actually contained a number of smaller units stuck together.


Kodak and Sony have also shown interest in OLED production.


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Samsung Develops World's Largest 21" OLED Panel for Digital TV
4 January 2005






Competition is heating up as companies accelerate their moves to develop the next generation of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays.


OLED display responses are 1,000 times faster than liquid crystal displays (LCDs), thus enabling greater resolution. The display's ability to function perfectly without a backlight means that monitors can be produced with one-third the depth of their LCD rivals.


Samsung Electronics announced Tuesday that it has developed the world's largest active matrix-based (AM) OLED display panel for digital televisions. Souk Jun-hyung, senior vice president of the LCD research and development center, said that the 21-inch OLED display features the highest resolution at 6.22 million pixels.


Last October, LG Philips LDC developed a 20.1-inch OLED television in conjunction with LG Electronics, and last May, Samsung SDI released its own 17-inch OLED product. The two companies adopted low temperature poly-silicon (LTPS) for their products to ensure they have longer life spans and higher resolution.


At present, OLED displays are largely restricted to mobile phone use, but it is likely that large OLED-paneled televisions will replace PDP and LCD TVs in a few years.


According to a survey by Display Search, the global OLED market is expected to grow in scale from US$330 million (W343.8 billion) last year to $830 million in 2005 and $2.2 billion by 2008.
 
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#2 ·
10" and bigger with no top end listed implies to me that the biggest size intended will not be greater than 32" or so. Just a feeling. No inside info - just a surmise.


Also, could you please change your font, many folks including myself use a different background.
 
#4 ·
I had to highlight the font color to read it.


I realize that small OLED displays are used in some cell phones, PDAs, video cameras, etc., but I understand that lifetime for the blue organics is pretty short (~1000 hrs). I think OLED displays would make the ultimate TV or monitor if they can overcome that problem and the high cost of manufacture.


"How Stuff Works" has a good article on OLED displays.
 
#6 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by jksgvb /forum/post/0


I realize that small OLED displays are used in some cell phones, PDAs, video cameras, etc., but I understand that lifetime for the blue organics is pretty short (~1000 hrs). I think OLED displays would make the ultimate TV or monitor if they can overcome that problem and the high cost of manufacture.

Of course, it was only a few years ago that the lifetimes were measured in seconds -- not years.


Still, even with all the recent progress, there is no certanty that OLED (or SED for that matter) will ever overcome their technical and manufacturing problems.
 
#7 ·
 SAMSUNG Electronics Develops World’s First 40-inch a-Si-based OLED for Ultra-slim, Ultra-sharp Large TVs
19 May 2005












Samsung Electronics, the leader in TFT-LCD technology, today announced that it has successfully developed the world's first single-sheet, 40-inch active matrix (AM) OLED (organic light-emitting diode) for emissive flat panel TV applications. The high-definition-compatible OLED prototype has a wide screen pixel format of 1280x800 (WXGA) driven by an amorphous silicon (a-Si) AM backplane to permit faster video response times with low power consumption.


Samsung's 40-inch OLED panel will be demonstrated for the first time at the world's largest display industry event, Society for Information Display (SID) 2005 International Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition in Boston, May 24– 27. .


Manufactured on Samsung's fourth generation (4G) production line with a mother-glass size of 730mm x 920mm, the new OLED prototype combines all of the traditional features of emissive OLED technology, including wide viewing angle, thin package size, no color filter and no backlight, with the enormous production infrastructure advantages of standard a-Si techniques. To date, AM OLED prototypes have used costly polysilicon approaches, which have limited production sizes.


Shattering traditional AM OLED size limitations, the new prototype offers a maximum screen brightness of 600 nits; a black-and-white contrast ratio of 5,000:1; and, a color gamut of 80 percent. Motion pictures with ultra-high quality images can be impeccably reproduced by skillfully employing OLED's rapid video response capabilities for image processing of HD-class resolution. The ultra-thin shape of the panels will allow future TV set designers to create televisions with a total thickness of only 3cm or less.


After launching its OLED development initiative in 2001 to secure leadership in next-generation display technologies, Samsung developed a 14.1” WXGA (1280x768) OLED panel in 2004, followed by the world's first 21” HD-class (1920x1080) OLED panel in January, 2005. This ambitious pace of innovation accelerated development of today's unusually large 40-inch OLED prototype, paving the way for large-size OLED TVs.


“Our development of a 40-inch OLED will provide a firm basis from which we can become the unassailable market leader in the flat panel display market of the future,” said Dr. Kyuha Chung, vice president of Samsung Electronics LCD R&D Center . “We're taking an early leadership position in the next-generation display market, building on Samsung Electronics' success in the TFT-LCD market.”


Samsung Electronics is the supervisory and lead research institution for detailed implementation of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry & Energy's (MOCIE) Next-Generation Growth Engine Industries Initiative. The latest round of development has been conducted as part of the project, “Development of Solution-Based AM OLED for Low-Cost 4G HDTVs using a-Si.”


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CDT Demonstrates Milestone in OLED Displays
3 November 2005




14" P-OLED display ink jet printed @ CDT



Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) [Nasdaq: OLED] has announced another important step in the development of polymer light emitting diode (P-OLED) display technology with the production of a number of 14 inch full color displays using ink jet printing. The displays were produced at CDT's Technology Development Centre in the UK, and feature a resolution of 1280 x 768 pixels x RGB, equivalent to almost three million sub-pixels, or over 30 million ink jet drops.


The active matrix panels use an amorphous silicon backplane, and were made using a multi-nozzle approach - up to 128 nozzles - with no interlacing, and are believed to be the first of their kind ever produced.


The development strengthens CDT's view that multi-nozzle ink jet printing is the best approach to achieving scaleability and a low TAC time in the manufacture of high quality P-OLED displays.


Earlier this year, CDT demonstrated several 5.5 inch displays, and the latest 14 inch displays are part of a continuing program to develop both the underlying P-OLED technology and the means of manufacture. The WXGA+ panels were produced using printers from the Litrex Corporation, a company in which CDT currently has a 50% holding.


For CDT, Dr David Fyfe, CEO commented: "We are delighted at the rate of progress being demonstrated by these latest displays. It is not easy to produce high quality products when manufacturing a display design for the first time and in very small quantities, so the evident viewing quality and freedom from major defects demonstrated by these panels is especially encouraging."


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Idemitsu and Sony to jointly develop materials for OLED
Agreement reached for mutual use of each company's OLED-related patents
29 November 2005


Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd. (hereafter Idemitsu) and Sony Corporation (hereafter Sony) have signed a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) on November 28, 2005 to jointly develop new superior Organic Light-Emitting Diode (hereafter OLED) luminous materials. And to promote the joint development, they have agreed to the mutual use of each company's OLED-related patents, i.e. material patents and component patents. The formal contract is expected to be signed at the end of January 2006.


OLED is a self-luminous display, which emits light by running an electric current through organic luminous materials. As a result of its simple structure, whereby the organic luminous layer is placed between two glass panels, no back-light system is required. This leads to a much thinner display. OLED is widely considered to be the most viable next-generation flat display, showing excellent color reproduction capability and high-speed response to moving images.


Idemitsu developed the world's brightest blue-light organic luminous material in 1997, based on their molecular engineering and organic synthesis technologies. Idemitsu has since continuously been developing new luminous materials for the mid-large size OLEDs. In addition to materials development, Idemitsu is aggressively working on new technologies such as combination technology for materials, OLED component technologies, etc.


Sony is developing various material and component technologies, and presented a 13 “OLED panel in February 2001 and a 24” OLED in January 2003, based on low temperature poly silicon TFT (Thin Film Transistor) technologies. Sony's mass-produced OLEDs were adopted in the company's PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) products from September 2004. And now, Sony is working on developing new technologies for the realization of a mid-large size OLED panel.


By sharing their complementary OLED related technologies, Idemitsu and Sony will develop new superior OLED luminous materials, boasting excellent features such as high luminescence efficiency for lower power consumption, high brightness and color reproduction for HD contents era, high response time for moving images, long durability, etc.


In addition, the agreement will grant mutual access to both companies' individual OLED-related patents. Sony will be able to use Idemitsu's OLED component related patents, whereby Idemitsu will be able to use Sony's OLED material related patents. As a result, the joint development will be accelerated, and Idemitsu and Sony are expected to expand their respective material and component businesses smoothly.


“As a materials manufacturer, we are delighted to have a strong relationship with Sony Corporation which positions OLED as the leading candidate to succeed as the next generation display" said Akihiko Tenbo, President, Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd. "The complementary strengths of Sony's display technologies and Idemitsu's material technologies will positively drive OLED development.”


“We are very pleased to work on this joint development with Idemitsu, which has leading edge technology in many areas and especially in OLED material technologies.” said Ryoji Chubachi, President and Electronics CEO, Sony Corporation. “Sony is positioning OLED as the most important technology for the next generation flat display. Thanks to the development of new superior luminous materials through the joint efforts of the two companies, we will be able to accelerate the OLED development and will advance the materialization of our OLED applied products.”


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CDT reports new records for OLED display materials
12 December 2005


Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) has announced two major milestones in the development of long lifetime, high efficiency light emitting polymers for full color, video capable displays.


A phosphorescent red device has been produced by CDT and Sumitomo Chemical which has a lifetime [see footnote] of half a million hours from an initial luminance of 100 cd/m2; this is a record for lifetime of solution-processable materials of any color.


The efficiency is also improved at over 7cd/A. Red efficiency is especially important as this color consumes the largest share of power input in a color device, so improvements in red efficiency have important practical implications.


The second major milestone announced is a lifetime of 150,000 hours for a fluorescent blue device based on a new material developed by CDT, and now part of the Sumation™ portfolio. Just eighteen months ago, CDT announced the achievement of 30,000 hours lifetime for fluorescent blue. The efficiency is also the highest recorded for a blue polyfluorene material at 10cd/A.


The new blue material yields very good color values and efficiency. The OLED industry has come to regard progress on blue materials as a key indicator, since this performance dictates the range of full color applications which can be implemented. The progress announced today gives a strong indication that the technology is moving rapidly to satisfy the requirements for applications including large display screens.


These new materials are fully printable - a major advantage of polymer OLED technology over other OLED technologies. They are also compatible with each other and could be combined in the same device.


"The progress on red lifetime and efficiency is astonishingly rapid," said David Fyfe, CEO of CDT. "Increasingly, the progress on blue lifetime is building on the synergies arising from both the acquisition of Dow Chemical's P-OLED technology by Sumitomo, and the merging of CDT's and Sumitomo's know-how into Sumation. We are confident of further progress."

Footnote


Other data released are the lifetimes from higher initial luminance levels of 200, 300 and 400 cd/m2, which for the red material are as follows: 125,000 hours, 55,500 hours and 31,200 hours respectively, and for the blue: 37,500 hours, 16,700 hours and 9,400 hours. Efficiencies are quoted at over 7 cd/A and 10 cd/A for the red and blue respectively.


When "lifetime" is discussed here, it refers to the time taken for the display/pixel to fall to half its initial stated luminance. Lifetime estimates are based on accelerated testing of simple test devices at several very high initial luminance levels, and use of these data to calculate predicted lifetimes at lower brightness levels. Data are presented subject to experimental error.


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CDT Sees Further Rapid Progress In Polymer Lifetime Development
13 March 2006


Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) [Nasdaq: OLED] welcomes the announcement by Sumation™ - its joint venture partner with Sumitomo Chemical - of rapid progress in the development of long lifetime, high efficiency light emitting polymers for full color, video capable P-OLED displays.


Following a previous announcement in December, CDT now reports the achievement of blue fluorescent devices (CIEx=0.14, y=0.21) with 12,500 hours lifetime(1) from an initial luminance of 400cd/m², and an efficiency of 9cd/A.


Also announced are solution processable red phosphorescent devices (CIEx=0.67, y=0.32) with 50,000 hours lifetime(2) and an efficiency of 11cd/A.


CDT also welcomes the announcement of a green material with color co-ordinates (CIEx=0.36, y=0.60), which represents a more saturated color than previously available from this class of material. Materials with strong colors are important in the design of full color displays with good efficiency and lifetime characteristics. Lifetime achieved for this material is 50,000 hours(3) with an efficiency of 16cd/A.


The increased performance demonstrated by these latest data has prompted a switch to reporting lifetimes extrapolated from the higher luminance of 400cd/m².


Comments CDT's CEO Dr David Fyfe: "We are delighted to see rapid progress being made by the team from Sumation™, our joint venture operation formed in 2005. We place a very high priority on continuing to improve the underlying capability of P-OLED technology and the range of applications it can satisfy. We expect to continue to report further progress going forward. These data demonstrate the very significant synergy achieved with the combination of two very experienced teams in Cambridge and Tokyo."

1. Lifetime data has hitherto been reported by CDT from an initial luminance of 100cd/m². On this basis, the blue fluorescent devices would have an extrapolated lifetime of 200,000 hours.

2. Equivalent to 800,000 hours from 100cd/m².

3. Equivalent to 600,000 hours from 100cd/m²


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Samsung Confirms AMOLED Roll-out
23 March 2006


The projections for the huge market growth of OLED displays beginning in 2007 are staggering, and depend on the roll-out of active-matrix OLEDs (AMOLEDs) as the main display in lots and lots of cell phones.


Now, Lee Woo-Jong, vice president of Samsung SDI’s Mobile Display Business, has announced that the first manufacturing line of his company’s $450M AMOLED plant in Cheonan is scheduled to start producing displays by the end of the year with ramp-up in January '07, which is generally consistent with previous estimates. An EE Times story quotes Lee as saying that the plant will produce the equivalent of 20M 2- to 2.6-inch displays annually. The target application is "digital multimedia broadcasting-enabled phones."


"Initially, we will target the mobile TV phone market and then expand the territory to the 40-inch-level television market in two or three years," said Lee. "We plan to increase the annual AMOLED production capacity to 100M units by 2008 to meet an expected strong demand for higher-resolution displays for mobile TV phones. We have already been negotiating with several global mobile TV phone makers on design-in issues." Although Lee did not identify any potential customers, it is well known in the industry that Samsung Electronics will be a major customer. The AMOLEDs will compete with active-matrix TFTs in this premium end of the cell-phone market.


Samsung SDI will be making its AMOLEDs on a Gen 4 line, and claims its displays will be the first to use thin-film transistors made from low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS). Although this could be true for AMOLED displays intended for cell phones, Toshiba announced a 3.5-inch AMOLED using LTPS last October at FPD International.


Samsung SDI is known to be working with Universal Display Corp. (Ewing, NJ; www.universaldisplay.com ), whose phosphorescent small-molecule OLED materials permitted Samsung to build the first cell-phone AMOLED prototype that consumed less power than an equivalent TFT-LCD.


An editorial note: Lee’s stated intention to "expand the [OLED] territory to the 40-inch level television market in two or three years" should be approached with caution. We believe the company’s cell-phone display production will use the proven vacuum thermal evaporation process for depositing the OLED materials. While this is a reasonable initial approach for small displays fabricated on substrates no larger than Gen 4, it would not be suitable for the larger fab generations required to produce large TV panels economically. Furthermore, the largest LTPS deposition equipment in the world is currently Gen 4.


This means that TV-size AMOLED panels will require fundamentally different OLED deposition and backplane fabrication processes than the initial phone-panel product - or Samsung would have to undertake a major, expensive and time-consuming scale-up of LTPS processing. These considerations make volume production of 40-inch panels unlikely in a two- to three-year time frame, although RGB AMOLED prototypes in such sizes are a definite possibility. (Samsung has been showing a "color-by-white" 40-inch OLED demonstrator on the show circuit for some time, but acknowledges that this approach represents a technological dead end for large displays - in part because of its poor luminous efficiency.)


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OLLA project reports OLED lighting milestones
12 April 2006


The European OLLA project has demonstrated white OLEDs with an efficacy of 10 lm/W, as well as green ITO-free devices.


Europe's OLLA project, which brings together a consortium of 24 partners to investigate OLEDs for lighting applications, has delivered its first milestone to the European Commission.




Blue pin-type OLED



The project deliverable is an advanced white OLED prototype light source, with an efficacy of more that 10 lm/W, emitting several thousand hours at 1000 cd/m2 brightness. This initial result makes use of PIN™ doping technology developed by Novaled, which enables increased efficiency with long lifetime at lower driving voltages.


"We have made substantial progress in nearly all working areas within the project," comments Peter Visser, project manager of the European integrated project OLLA. “New chemical compounds for OLEDs have been synthesized, characterized and transferred to other partners to be tested in OLED devices.


"Also, optical light out-coupling structures were investigated and our modeling activities helped us to get a much deeper understanding of the basic processes inside OLEDs. These results show our combined progress in view of large area lighting."

ITO-free devices


An indium tin oxide (ITO)-free OLED device has also been demonstrated within OLLA.




An ITO-free 1x1 cm2 green OLED device with Baytron® PH500 as

injection material, opening a cheaper approach for OLED lighting applications.




ITO is commonly used as the conductive anode material for OLEDs and liquid crystal display (LCD) panels. Due to the growing demand of flat-panel displays, the price of the rare metal indium has been driven sky-high from US$60 per kg in 2002 to nearly $1000/kg today.


As OLEDs gain more and more interest in the field of lighting applications, the consumption of indium is expected to further rise in the future. To replace ITO, a newly developed conductive polymer from H.C. Starck was employed by the OLLA project.


“Until now, our Baytron® material has been used on top of ITO anodes as a Hole Injection Layer (HIL) to improve brightness, lower the driving voltages, and to reduce the defect density of OLEDs,” said Andreas Elschner of H.C. Starck. “We have developed a new formulation of Baytron®, which is especially tailored to reach high conductivity and good optical properties for use in OLED applications.”


Baytron® PH500 is a new formulation of the conductive polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) poly(styrenesulfonate), or PEDOT/PSS in short. It can be applied in solution by common spin-coating, printing or inkjet techniques.


In close cooperation with H.C. Starck, the TU Dresden-based Institut für Angewandte Photophysik (IAPP) has demonstrated a first 1.1 cm2 green OLED using the new Baytron® PH500 formulation instead of a normal ITO anode.


"We measured an efficiency of 18.7 lm/W at 1000 cd/m2 brightness, which is an amazingly high value," said IAPP’s Karsten Walzer. “We could even show that OLEDs on PH500 are more efficient than on ITO. This is due to their better matching optical properties within the OLED.” More detailed research results was disclosed during a presentation by IAPP on the SPIE Photonics Europe conference in Strasbourg.


“This encouraging result is one example of many steps we still have to make before commercializing OLEDs in Lighting applications becomes reality," comments Dietrich Bertram of Philips Lighting and technical coordinator of OLLA. "A possible elimination of the ITO layer is a very interesting option in developing this technology towards commercialization.”


“However, as the feasibility has only been shown on 1 cm2 so far, additional research has to be done on larger areas.”

About the OLLA project


OLLA (Organic LEDs for ICT & next generation Lighting Applications) is a joint research project on the development of white OLEDs for general lighting applications. The goal of the OLLA project is to demonstrate in 2008 high-brightness white OLED light tiles with a long lifetime and high energy efficiency.


The consortium has 24 partners in 8 European countries. OLLA is partially funded under the IST (Information Society Technologies) priority of the European Union’s 6th Framework Programme.


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DuPont Announces Breakthrough in Next Generation Flat Panel Displays Technology With High Performance Solution Processing of Small Molecule Materials
26 April 2006


DuPont — a leader in the development of organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays — today announced a significant technology breakthrough in its OLED technology, taking a significant step toward commercialization of this next generation flat panel display offering.


Using advanced materials, OLEDs produce low power, thin, high-performance flat panel displays. OLED panels are emissive, eliminating the need for backlights and simplifying display design compared to other display technologies, such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs).


DuPont’s latest technological achievement enables -- for the first time -- the combination of high performance and long lifetime of small molecule OLED materials with a printing process that is substantially lower cost and more scalable to larger display sizes than the industry incumbent processes, such as vapor deposition. Through a combination of innovative processing device architecture and new materials, DuPont has demonstrated printing of small molecule OLED materials from solution.


DuPont has achieved lifetimes of the three primary colors each exceeding 10,000 hours of white lifetime (or 40,000 hours for a typical video) at the brightnesses required for a 200 nit display. With this development, DuPont has demonstrated that OLEDs can be manufactured at high yields and low total cost.


"Our model shows that the total cost of OLEDs can be 30 percent less than LCDs," said Craig Naylor, group vice president - DuPont Electronic & Communication Technologies. "Our proprietary materials are also designed to use less power than LCDs. And OLED displays can be very thin -- less than 1mm. With this development, we expect OLEDs will become the next generation flat panel display technology. "


OLEDs are starting to penetrate key applications in small displays today, including cellular phones and MP3 players. With DuPont’s technology, OLEDs can compete in a larger range of products -- including PDAs, personal digital media players, industrial and consumer electronics and other applications where bright, colorful, high contrast, thin, video capable displays are required, including eventually large screen televisions.


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Salmon DNA improves OLED performance
PDF
8 May 2006




Completed wafer with 4 devices on it.




Salmon DNA



Incorporating salmon DNA into the structure of a conventional OLED makes it ten times more efficient and thirty times brighter, say researchers in the US.


Salmon DNA could hold the key to more efficient and brighter OLEDs, according to researchers in the US. By incorporating a thin layer of DNA into the OLED structure, the team says its BioLEDs are as much as ten times more efficient and thirty times brighter than their conventional counterparts. (Applied Physics Letters 88 171109)


The team's idea involves using the DNA as an electron-blocking layer. This improves the probability of electrons and holes recombining and emitting photons, which in turn enhances the device's luminance.


"It turns out that DNA has nearly ideal energy levels that allow hole transport to proceed unimpeded while it prevents electrons being transported too quickly," Andrew Steckl from the University of Cincinnati told optics.org. "This gives both electrons and holes a greater opportunity to recombine and emit photons."


Steckl and colleagues used DNA from Japan. "Salmon fishing is a very large industry in Hokkaido, Japan, some 200 000 tons per year," explained Steckl. "While the meat and eggs are edible, the male roe is normally a waste product but it is very rich in DNA."


DNA is normally soluble in water making it very difficult to process into thin films. To overcome this, the team used a reaction with a surfactant to convert the DNA into a water insoluble form, but soluble in selected alcohols. This allowed the group to spin coat a 20 nm thick electron blocking layer of DNA on top of the BioLED's hole injection layer.


The team tested a green- and blue-emitting BioLED against conventional OLEDs and found that the DNA electron blocking layer improved the luminance in both cases. For a current density of 200 mA/cm2, the green BioLED achieved 15000 cd/m2, whereas the baseline device reached just 4500 cd/m2. On the other hand, the blue BioLED had a luminance of 1500 cd/m2 at 200 mA/cm2, while the corresponding baseline device reached around 800 cd/m2.


Conventional OLEDs are renowned for having lifetime issues but Steckl and colleagues believe the DNA could also play a role here. "Our preliminary results show that the lifetime of the BioLEDs are significantly longer than that of equivalent OLEDs without the DNA layer," said Steckl. "We are working on understanding the difference in degradation mechanisms."


"We are trying to improve the control of the DNA layer thickness and properties," he continued. "We are also working on introducing lumophores in the DNA layer to obtain combined photoemission from multiple layers in the device. So far we have only used salmon DNA for BioLED fabrication, but are considering other sources of DNA such as mammalian and plant DNA."


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Sony to Start Construction of Large OLED Development and Production Line Early in 2007
19 May 2006


Sony Corp. revealed its plan to build a pilot line that will be dedicated to developing and volume producing large-area organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) early next year.


The new facility will be located in the Shiga complex of ST-LCD, a joint venture between Sony and Toyota established in 2004. The company said it would focus on 10-inch and larger OLEDs at the new line, while developing OLED flat TVs and flexible displays. The new line construction is scheduled to begin in March 2007.


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CDT ACHIEVES 100,000 HOUR BLUE POLYMER LIFETIME
23 May 2006


CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom, 23rd May 2005 - Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) [Nasdaq: OLED] announces the achievement of another important milestone with the development of blue polymers for light emitting devices with 100,000 hours lifetime* from an initial luminance of 100cd/m².


This latest announcement is one of a series which CDT has made to enable the industry to chart its progress on this key parameter. Figures of 30,000, 70,000 and 80,000 hours (all from 100cd/m²) were published in May, October and December 2004.


Lifetime is one of the most important parameters which have governed the rate at which PLED technology is adopted commercially, and there is much industry interest in such figures. For this reason CDT has, for the first time, made available a wider range of data around its latest achievement, and included lifetime data for higher initial luminance levels.


Lifetimes for devices made using the new blue materials at 200cd/m², 300cd/m2 and 400cd/m² are greater than 25,000 hours, 10,000 hours and 6,000 hours respectively.


Higher lifetimes are already available with red and green polymers, and so this increased blue lifetime will allow yet more applications to be realized using PLED technology, including full colour displays for digital cameras, PDAs and DVD players. PLED display applications will ultimately include large flat panel televisions.


For CDT, Dr David Fyfe, CEO noted that the performance of materials in an actual display system will depend on a number of factors other than simply brightness to the viewer, such as whether the devices are top-emitting or bottom-emitting, the aperture ratio, the sub-pixel aperture ratio, average pixel brightness, choice of circular polarizer and so on. Fyfe says: "CDT intends to press for industry standards which reflect these realities and which will also allow calculations to be made of system performance at any level, enabling materials to be compared and the practical significance of quoted lifetimes to be exemplified.


"I am delighted to be reporting these new levels of blue lifetime, levels which are consistent with our rapid yet consistent progress over the last two years. We believe the disclosure of lifetime data at more challenging luminance levels will give additional meaning to these results and help designers and display makers to predict more accurately the performance of our technology in real life applications."

* Note to editors: When 'lifetime' is discussed here, it refers to the time taken for the display/pixel to fall to half its initial stated luminance. Lifetime estimates are based on accelerated testing of simple test devices at several very high initial luminance levels, and use of these data to calculate predicted lifetimes at lower brightness levels.


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Samsung SDI to Launch AM OLED Mass Production Three Months Ahead of Schedule
24 May 2006


The Electronics Times reported today that Samsung SDI (CEO Kim Soon-Taek) would embark on active matrix (AM) organic light emitting diode (OLED) mass production on October 1st this year, which is three months ahead of the original schedule in January 2007.


A top executive of the company yesterday expressed strong commitment to the early launch of volume production, saying, "At the end of June this year, when installation of major facilities including crystallization and photo equipment is completed, the framework for starting mass production will be about 70~80% completed." He also stated, "We intend to disclose our own AMOLED brand by announcing our AM OLED business strategy in November, after launching mass production of OLEDs on October 1st," and "We are working on brand setup."


It will opt for the fourth generation standard (730x920mm) as the glass substrate for mass production, and the maximum capacity will reach 20 million units per year (based on mobile handset applications).


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OLED materials specialist gets funds, adds CEO
26 May 2006


LONDON — OLED-T, a U.K. developer and manufacturer of organic light emitting diode (OLED) materials and device structures, has raised £3.8 million (around $7 million) in venture capital funding and started an executive recruitment drive.


OLED-T (Enfiield and Uxbridge, England) has been formed from the assets of ELAM-T which was formed in 1999 and had previously raised nearly £7 million in VC investment. The company says the change of name reflects the focus on the development and commercialization of OLED technology. Prof Poopathy Kathirgamanathan, who was Chair of Electronic Materials at London South Bank University where the OLED material research work was carried out from 1993 to 1998 and who founded ELAM-T, is CTO of the company.


OLED-T will use the investment to fund a new research and development (R&D) facility in the U.K. and to bolster its executive management team and has already recruited Myrddin Jones to be Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Jones was previously General Manager at Hitachi Europe’s Display Products Group where he had responsibility for implementing Hitachi’s display product strategy across Europe and has had over 25 years experience in research and development (R&D) and market development for display businesses.


"OLED is the hottest technology in the display industry now and in the immediate future, and OLED-T is the most exciting early stage company in the OLED market. My brief is to commercialize OLED-T’s world beating OLED material by engaging with display manufacturers”, said Jones.


At Hitachi Jones managed annual revenues of €100 million for the company's European Display Products Group and grew the company's European display sales to European mobile phone, industrial and automotive equipment manufacturers – some of the main application areas being targeted by OLEDs.


OLED-T develops, manufactures and licenses high efficiency, long life-time materials known as ELAMATES for OLED displays. The ELAMATE materials are said to provide efficiency improvements of up to 80 per cent over competitive materials, and lifetimes of as much as three times that of competitive OLED materials. The company designs three of the key materials used in OLED manufacture - the electron transport layer, organic emitters and hole injection layer. OLED-T says it has been successful in extending the display lifetime for blue to over 20,000 hours to match that of the red and green elements.






ELAMATES are suitable for use in both 'Passive Matrix' and 'Active Matrix' products. While the passive are today’s OLED technology, enabling small area, low resolution displays to be manufactured cost effectively for applications such as MP3 players, mobile phone sub-displays, active matrix is seen as tomorrow’s OLED technology, enabling large area, high resolution displays to be manufactured for applications such mobile phone main displays, PDAs, and GPS navigation units. Large area displays are set to significantly increase demand for materials.


The new investment will enable OLED-T to expand its existing U.K. research and development (R&D) operation by opening a new custom-built chemistry facility to enable it to scale up its material production. The company has already invested £1 million in advanced machinery for device development.


Display market research and consulting group, DisplaySearch, has reported that the OLED industry reached revenues of over $500 million in 2005 and forecast revenues of more than $4.6 billion in 2010 – around 10% of the component TAM values is for the materials.


OLED will be the fastest growing non-LCD display technology and is said to have several inherent advantages compared to LCDs. They are 50% of the thickness and 70% of the weight and provide a 20% reduction lower power consumption. They are visible from every direction with no color shift and have a 10x faster switching speed to provide improved moving image performance. They provide a 40% bigger color range resulting in stronger, more vivid colors with a contrast of greater that 1000:1 resulting in a vibrant display image with potential for millions of colors.


The company has filed over 60 patents in the area of OLED materials and device structures and sells its materials directly to OLED display manufacturers primarily in Asia. OLED-T are working with 11 global display manufacturers which have evaluated several of its materials in laboratory and production environments and pre-production with major companies in Japan, Korea and Taiwan is being implemented this year with full scale volume commercial adoption by the first customer planned for 2007. It has established relationships with two sub-contract manufacturers in the U.K. and one in the U.S. who can manufacture up to 100kg per month of its materials.


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Universal Display, Mitsubishi team on OLED materials
30 May 2006


MANHASSET, N.Y. — Universal Display Corp. has signed an agreement with Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. and Mitsubishi Chemical Group Science and Technology Research Center to collaborate on developing materials for phosphorescent OLED displays accessible through ink-jet printing.


Universal Display (Ewing, N.J.) has been researching a variety of OLED technologies, including phosphorescent OLED technology—which the company said offers up to four times higher efficiency than conventional OLED technology.


"Collaborating with a world-class chemical company like Mitsubishi Chemical allows us to share ideas and help each other reach the next level of innovation for OLED materials based on our PHOLED phosphorescent OLED technology and Mitsubishi Chemical’s expertise in OLED chemicals and ink formulation," said Steven V. Abramson, president and chief operating officer of Universal Display, in a statement. “Mitsubishi Chemical’s commitment to printable phosphorescent OLEDs, which we call P2OLEDs, indicates that ink-jet printable PHOLED technology has real commercial potential.


Japan-based Mitsubishi Chemical announced at the end of last year it had built the highest-efficiency printable blue phosphorescent OLED. Mitsubishi Chemical expects to accelerate development of printable red, green and blue phosphorescent materials through the agreement.


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OLED fabrication uses direct-photolithography process
6 June 2006


SAN FRANCISCO — Researchers from Germany’s University of Cologne have achieved what they say is the first high-resolution, full-color organic light-emitting diode display based on a direct photolithographic process.

The team reported on the OLED at the Society for Information Display (SID) symposium here.


The direct photolithography technique was developed in collaboration with Merck OLED Materials GmbH. Unlike other approaches such as inkjet printing, the technique does not require development of an entirely new process technology; rather, it relies chemical modification of the organic material.


"By adding oxetane side groups, our emissive polymers gain the properties of photoresists. Thin films of these smart resists can be patterned simply by exposure to ultraviolet light," said team leader Klaus Meerholz, a Cologne professor.


The group has used the method to fabricate fully operational true-color matrix displays that can display simple pictures and support video while reportedly consuming less power than most conventional displays.


During the fabrication process, spin coating is used to deposit the first polymer onto a transparent substrate. The polymer film is then irradiated with ultraviolet light through a shadow mask, causing the polymer to cross-link and to form an insoluble material. Material in the nonilluminated areas of the film is washed away with solvent.


Two other polymers are subsequently deposited in the same way to fabricate a pixelated device with three individually addressable colors.


Meerholz emphasized that the work is preliminary and that research is required before commercialization can be contemplated.


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CDT, Litrex team for inkjet printing of polymer displays
6 June 2006


LONDON — Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) has teamed with Litrex Corporation on cost effective ways to manufacture high resolution polymer organic light emitting displays (P-OLED) through the development of an inkjet printing technique capable of producing the displays at up to 200 pixels per inch.

The work will cover both hardware and software enhancements, mainly to take place at Litrex, as well as process developments at CDT including plasma pre-treatment and film formation development. The work is expected to be completed by the second half of 2007.


Inkjet printing is currently the favored means of producing 200 ppi displays on the large substrate sizes necessary for cost competitiveness. ULVAC subsidiary Litrex (Pleasanton, CA) has already designed and delivered a variety of inkjet printers up to Gen 8 (2.4m x 2.4m glass size) to the display industry, but not for operation at such high resolutions.


"This program will allow us to extend our current inkjet manufacturing technology, using proven techniques and methods, to achieve OLED resolutions which are difficult to achieve by other patterning methods for direct-emissive display technologies," said David Orgill, President and CEO of Litrex.


The agreement comes amongst a flurry of deals announced by CDT Tuesday (June 6), including the sale of an inkjet printing system and associated know-how to the National University of Singapore (NUS). CDT said that it will also provide NUS with know-how based on extensive experience of inkjet printing for evaluation and pre-production of P-OLED displays.


The company also revealed it sold a sophisticated Eclipse display test system to Frankfurt, Germany-based Merck OLED Materials GmbH.


And CDT said its project with Japan’s Toppan Printing has yielded 5.5 inch full color active matrix polymer OLED (P-OLED) displays using a roll printing method. The companies are demonstrating the displays — which they say are the first of their type produced — at this week’s SID conference in San Francisco.


CDT and Toppan have been working on the project since February 2005. The technique is based on relief printing, already widely used for transferring soluble materials on to a range of substrates. Toppan has adapted the process to produce, with high accuracy, tiny patterned pixels that exhibit highly uniform distribution.


The companies say the process will be capable of scaling to large substrate sizes and very high resolution, potentially over 200 ppi.


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Toppan, Cambridge Display advance roll print process
6 June 2006


MANHASSET, N.Y. — Toppan Printing and Cambridge Display Technology said they have entered the second phase of a joint program to explore alternative printing processes for fabricating displays based on light-emitting polymer (PLED) technology.


Phase one proved the feasibility of using a roll printing process to deposit light-emitting polymer materials onto a glass substrate. It was completed at the end of 2004.


Phase two will focus roll-printed display performance and will aim to produce displays with a lifetime, efficiency and color fidelity comparable to displays produced using ink-jet printing.


The partners said the aim is to produce over the next two years full-color demonstrations of 12-inch diagonal displays with VGA resolution.


David Fyfe, CEO of CDT (Cambridge, U.K.), said in a statement: "The combination of Toppan's skills in conventional printing processes and those of CDT in light-emitting polymer ink formulation and device structure, enhance the chances for success in this promising project to create very low cost displays".


CDT is a leader in polymer-OLEDs (organic light-emitting diode) for electronic displays.


Toppan Printing (Tokyo) will supply core technologies developed in its printing, packaging, security, electronics, digital imaging and optronics businesses.


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OLED-T AT SID INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
6 June 2006


London, UK – 6 June, 2006 – OLED-T, a developer and manufacturer of world-class organic light emitting diode (OLED) materials and device structures, today announced that it will demonstrate a series of OLED displays and present a paper at SID International Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition on 4 to 9 June, 2006.


On Poster Stand P202, OLED-T will be presenting a poster on their host (for red and green) and electron transporter (E246) and a hole injector (E9363) which are available in commercial quantities (100 kg) for OLED display manufacture.


Professor Poopathy Kathirgamanathan, founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) will present a paper reporting on the performance of OLED-T’s foundation materials used in the manufacture of display products.


OLED-T’s proprietary electron transporter (E246) reduces the display operating voltage and increases the efficiency and the lifetime of OLEDs made of fluorescent or phosphorescent systems, compared with other industry materials. OLED-T’s novel proprietary hole injector (E9363) reduces the operating voltage, increases the efficiency and doubles the lifetime compared with existing solutions.


“The search for stable and high efficiency electron transporters and hole injectors has become particularly intense over the last 12 months as OLED manufacturers. This has coincided with a period of rapid development for OLED-T. SID will provide an opportunity to update the display industry on our progress,” said Professor Poopathy Kathirgamanathan, founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO).


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OLED manufacturers face pricing pressures
9 June 2006

As competition intensifies in the small-to-medium display market, OLED manufacturers are working to introduce lower cost fabrication techniques.


While displays based on organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) continue to dominate technical discussions at this year's Society of Information Display (SID) conference, analysts at iSuppli warn that OLED manufacturers must reduce prices to compete in the small to medium display market.


"Currently the battle is in active matrix devices," Paul Semenza, vice-president for display and consumer research at the US-based analyst firm, told optics.org. "Active matrix OLEDs carry a significant [a factor of two] premium over comparable TFT-LCDs."


Semenza concedes that OLED makers have made real progress in increasing production volumes, with unit shipments forecast to increase from 88 m in 2006 to 364 m in 2012. Revenues over the same time frame are predicted to increase from about $0.7 bn to $3.5 bn.


However, almost all OLED devices produced today are based on small-molecule technology and a passive-matrix design, which limits their use to simple displays in car dashboards and portable devices. The focus for OLED manufacturers now is to produce more sophisticated active-matrix devices, and to introduce polymer-based technology and new fabrication techniques to lower manufacturing costs.


For example, Cambridge Display Technology of the UK and Toppan Printing of Japan announced at the SID conference that they have exploited a novel roll-printing technique developed by Toppan to produce full-color active-matrix displays based on polymer OLEDs. Inkjet printing is currently the favored approach for OLED manufacture, but the two companies believe that roll printing offers a cheaper alternative that still achieves good uniformity and resolution.


Toppan's technique is based on relief printing, an established method for transferring soluble materials onto a range of substrates. But the Japanese firm has improved the precision of the technology to enable small-area pixels to be patterned with highly uniform distribution. The demonstrator displays measure 5.5 inches, but CDT and Toppan claim that the process could be scaled to larger substrate sizes and a resolution of 200 pixels per inch (ppi). In future, the process could also be suitable for producing flexible OLED displays.


DuPont has also developed a printing process for small-molecule OLED materials that it claims is cheaper and more scalable to large display sizes than techniques such as vapor deposition. Using this technique, DuPont has achieved lifetimes exceeding 10,000 hours for the three primary colors at the brightnesses required for a 200 nit display.


Craig Naylor, group vice president for electronic and communication technologies at DuPont, says that these early results demonstrate that OLEDs can be manufactured at high yields and low cost. "Our model shows that the total cost of OLEDs can be 30% less than LCDs. With this development, we expect OLEDs to become the next-generation flat-panel technology."


A joint research effort between Philips Lighting, Philips Research and Novaled has produced a white OLED with an efficacy of 32 lm/W at a brightness of 1000 cd/m2. The lifetime of the device was more than 20,000 hours, and had a colour-rendering index of 88. The companies claim that the device sets a record combination for lifetime and efficiency for a high-brightness white LED, and the researchers are now targeting 50 lm/W as the next benchmark.

About the author


Susan Curtis is editor of optics.org
 
#8 ·
Seems to me only a few months ago the OLED naysayers were (nay)saying that blue OLED lifetime was way too short to go to production. Now Samsung is saying that they are starting production later this year. So what breakthrough (other than salmon DNA!) did I miss in the news?


BTW, a huge thanks to Isochroma for collecting this information and putting it into a compact, coherent thread! Good work!


Regards to all,


Willie
 
#9 ·
Wow - great information - thanks!
 
#10 ·
samsung had a 32" led or oled lcd awhile ago that did 110% ntsc color gamut, samsung has been showing these models off for awhile but still hasn't made one for the consumer.


i waited a hole year for the samsung 460D then got stuck with getting the qualia 005 well not anymore.


also i remember some article at digitimes showing 4 oled back-lighting(red, blue, yellow/green and green) to be used in some display in the future.
 
#12 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by wanders /forum/post/0


Seems to me only a few months ago the OLED naysayers were (nay)saying that blue OLED lifetime was way too short to go to production. Now Samsung is saying that they are starting production later this year. So what breakthrough (other than salmon DNA!) did I miss in the news?

Near the end of the article they mention that the mass production numbers are for mobile handsets. At the moment the closest thing to a company planning to sell OLED TVs is Sony and they are only going to build a pilot line next year that is limited to smaller displays.


Quote:
Originally Posted by bri1270 /forum/post/0


Looks great on paper and with Prototypes...but then again so does SED...I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

SED though was only being researched by two companies while OLED is being researched by many major CE companies. One big hurdle that remains for OLED though is that it needs to have blue polymers with a lifetime of at least 20,000 hours at 500 cd/m². When that is achieved in production displays we will see a lot of companies start producing OLED TVs.
 
#16 ·
 Organic material from OLED-T has ten times carrier mobility
9 June 2006


A material with 10 times the carrier mobility and three times the lifetime of existing electron transport layers used in organic light emitting diode (OLED) devices has been developed by UK start-up OLED-T.


The company said the material, known as E246, is a drop-in alternative to aluminium quinolate, which was developed by Kodak. “It reduces operating voltage and gives you a more saturated colour,” said Professor Poopathy Kathirgamanathan, chief technology officer of OLED-T.


The firm’s intellectual property, developed by Kathirgamanathan, is in ‘small molecule’ OLED materials much like those from Kodak, in contrast to large molecule polymer emitters such as those used by Cambridge’s CDT.


E246 is being made in kilogramme quantities for OLED-T by an undisclosed European chemical company, and further refined at the company’s R&D lab on the Brunel Science Park.


Although he will not discuss detail, Kathirgamanathan told Electronics Weekly that OLED-T has moved away from very large metal atoms from the lanthanide series in its fluorescent emissive complexes, and gone over to comparatively lighter metal atoms.


“This gives us higher electron mobility,” he said. “High electron mobility with the right energy levels gives us lower operating voltage.”


Kathirgamanathan has also developed phosphorescent complexes containing a heavy metal atom surrounded by a ligand for red and green; a host for fluorescent blue; and a fluorescent blue dopant.


The blue host and dopant together “give a very dark colour with 0.15, 0.15 coordinates. In that, our only competitor is [Japanese firm] Idemitsu, that has the same coordinates,” he said.


In lifetime tests, OLED-T is claiming 160,000 hours from 100 to 50cd/m² for its fluorescent red and green, and what looks like a 10,000 hour half-life at 150cd/m² for its blue, although testing is not yet complete.


A second-generation of electron transport materials will, said Kathirgamanathan, yield a further 10-fold improvement in electron mobility, up to 10-3cm²/Vs. A second-generation blue emitter is also expected, doubling efficiency from 5 to 10cd/A, and “probably delivering 5-6lm/W”.


Qualification of the first emissive materials is underway with two customers, and is expected to take 16 to 20 months.


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OLEDs on the look-out for unique application
10 June 2006




Worldwide OLED panel market, 2004-2012: TV could take off around 2010 if backed by major players.

Image: iSuppli Corp, Organic Light-Emitting Diode Displays, 1H 2006





The growth of the OLED market depends heavily on the success of active matrix OLED technology.

Image: iSuppli Corp, Organic Light-Emitting Diode Displays, 1H 2006



Analysts expect the OLED panel market to grow by more than $200 m in 2006 as the technology gathers momentum. Kimberly Allen of iSuppli looks at the prospects for passive and active OLEDs in the face of stiff competition from LCDs.


Liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) are ubiquitous in everyday technology, from mobile phones and laptops to car stereos and coffee machines. But the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display is emerging as a credible flat-panel alternative thanks to some important advantages over LCDs.

OLED panel market


OLEDs possess the most fundamental feature needed in a display - they look great. As the name implies, OLEDs are diodes and function by injecting holes and electrons into a recombination region from which coloured light emerges. Different organic materials emit red, green, blue or other wavelengths of light, and come in small molecule and polymer form. Because they are emissive, OLEDs also have an excellent viewing angle, good contrast and high brightness.

Market Growth


Unlike an LCD, an OLED does not need a backlight, which means that the display panel can be thinner. This is an important advantage in mobile devices. OLEDs also offer the potential for lower power consumption compared with an LCD, which is always constrained by the power consumption of the backlight. OLEDs supply power only to the pixels illuminated in a given image. OLED materials and device structures are becoming so efficient that an active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) a few inches in diagonal, showing video (on average 30% of full brightness), consumes less power than an equivalent LCD. In addition, because OLEDs can operate at high speed - around 100 times faster than an LCD - devices can support video rates without blurring.

Challenges


OLEDs fall into two categories: passive matrix and active matrix. Active matrix means that every pixel is individually switched, as opposed to a passive matrix arrangement, where row and column electrodes are used to control the pixel at a given intersection.


Unfortunately for manufacturers, OLED driving schemes tend to be more complicated than LCD devices. The reason behind this is that OLEDs are current-driven and are sensitive to slight fluctuations in current. LCDs on the other hand are voltage-driven. Instead of needing one thin film transistor (TFT) per pixel in an active matrix scheme, OLEDs need between two to five, arranged in a compensation circuit.


However, the biggest hurdle facing OLED developers is short lifetime. Although OLED materials and device structures have improved greatly over the past few years, manufacturers can still only guarantee between 5000 and 15,000 h of operation before the brightness of the panel is reduced to half of its initial value. This performance is sufficient for mobile phones and other consumer electronics, but inadequate for television and more sophisticated products. The organic materials simply do not hold up well under the driving current or the exposure to other materials within the device. What's more, the cathode material is highly sensitive to air and even when sealed, the OLED performance degrades slowly over time.


Device lifetime is shortened not only by declining brightness, but also by colour drift. For example, if the red, green and blue emitters degrade at different rates, the display shifts in hue over time. Typically, colour OLEDs are made by patterning red, green and blue emitters into subpixels, although it is also possible to mix multiple emitters together to form a single "white" material and use a colour filter.


With a commercial history of just seven years, OLED manufacturing remains at an early stage, both in terms of technique and equipment. Small-molecule OLEDs are made using vapour deposition techniques, such as evaporation through a shadow mask. OLED materials are too delicate for photolithography. Polymer OLEDs are made by solution processing, either spin-on techniques (for monochrome) or inkjet printing (for colour), although the latter has not yet been commercialized. Yields are quite high for simple panels, but established processes have not been put in place for most types of colour panels. This means that OLEDs are still priced higher than equivalent LCDs.

Early Success


Despite the challenges involved, OLEDs have already reached the market in several key applications. The first commercial OLED product was a small-molecule, passive matrix monochrome car stereo display from Pioneer in 1999. Sold as an aftermarket device, the display was blue-green to resemble vacuum-fluorescent versions commonly in use. Since then, OLEDs have moved into mobile phones, MP3 players, a Kodak digital camera, various industrial and medical devices, and a few other consumer electronics.

Market value


The worldwide market for OLED panels was valued at $520 m (€400 m) in 2005, and is expected to reach $743 m in 2006, rising to $3.5 bn in 2012. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 29% from 2006 to 2012. Looking at the detail, the growing importance of portable media applications and mobile phone main displays is clear.


The biggest market for passive matrix OLEDs is subdisplays, followed by MP3 players. 2005 was a difficult year for OLED subdisplays with the number of units and value both declining in comparison to 2004. Colour subdisplays fared better than monochrome or area colour versions, showing a modest increase in units. However, even this category declined in value from $252 m to $206 m. The difficult subdisplay market was the result of the falling price of TFT-LCD panels (for main displays), which in turn forced down the price of colour super-twisted nematic (CSTN) LCD panels for both main displays and subdisplays. OLED manufacturers, unaccustomed to swift market changes and unwilling to greatly reduce prices because costs remained high, failed to keep up with the changes until later in the year. At that point, orders had already been placed for CSTN LCDs.


Simple OLEDs have been favoured in MP3 players, which are often used as fashion or status items by younger people, because an area colour OLED display is much more eye-catching than a monochrome LCD. MP3 players have played an important role in the PMOLED market over the past two years, leaping more than eight-fold in units between 2004 and 2005, and filling the gap in factory utilization during fluctuations in the subdisplay market. They have also provided an opportunity for smaller PMOLED makers to enter the market. Difficulties in the MP3 market include component shortages and an unstable base of OEMs. The OEMs making the MP3 players are largely Chinese, and shift suppliers readily, seeking the lowest price.


The OLED market is still heavily dominated by passive matrix panels, which are expected to account for 99% of value and more than 99% of units in 2006. But active matrix panels are poised for commercialization. A few products have already appeared, although full mass production at adequate yield has not yet been achieved.


Looking at the worldwide OLED display shipment value in terms of passive and active markets highlights the enormous changes that could soon occur within the industry. The PMOLED market is predicted to continue growing in units throughout the forecast period, but is expected to stagnate at a value of around $1 bn from 2008. This is due to the steep price competition already being seen with CSTN. It is worth noting that the PMLCD market has already stagnated and is now declining in value each year.

An active market


The growth of the OLED market depends heavily on the success of AMOLED. iSuppli believes that near-term commercialization is possible, and makes this assumption in its market forecast.


The first commercial AMOLED reached the market in April 2003. It was made by SK Display Corp - a manufacturing joint venture between Kodak and Sanyo - and was used in a Kodak EasyShare LS633 digital camera back display. The 174 (×RGB) × 218 pixel, 65,000-colour display measuring 2.2 inches has also been used by Ovideon and NeoSol for personal media players in 2005. However, SK Display folded in late 2005, primarily for financial reasons. In Japan, Sony released one model of its Clie PDA series fitted with an AMOLED during the first half of 2005 and is planning another AMOLED product, although no definite announcements have been made.


The most aggressive AMOLED company currently is Samsung SDI. It has invested heavily in building a factory and capital expenditures will reach $450 m. The plan is to release a mobile phone main display in early 2007 and samples are already shipping.


In the meantime, AU Optronics (AUO) has started selling a 2 inch AMOLED for a mobile phone. The OEM is BenQ-Siemens (which owns 40% of AUO), and the phone is being sold initially in Taiwan and then Europe. Other Taiwanese players are making definite plans. Chi Mei Electroluminescence (CMEL) was spun-off as a subsidiary of the Chi Mei Group in 2004 and plans to release both PMOLED and AMOLED panels in small sizes during 2006. Toppoly has built an AMOLED line and intends to release panels for a camera and a mobile phone near the end of 2006. Other players involved with AMOLED include Toshiba Matsushita Display, Hitachi, Samsung Electronics, LG.Philips LCD, RiTdisplay, Epson and Sharp.


The key application for AMOLED is the mobile phone main display. It offers the largest total available market (TAM), and is well-suited to the OLED's attractive image, low power consumption and thin profile. In addition, the increasing use of video on mobile devices also favours the OLED's fast speed. One challenge is the assurance of supply. Mobile handset makers need assurance from OLED panel suppliers that they can deliver at least 10,000 panels per month and often much more. Unfortunately, this figure is currently beyond the capability of most panel suppliers because of low yield and process development is continuing to improve manufacturing competence.


An interesting new idea is the possibility of area colour main displays for emerging markets such as India and South America. It is suggested that these markets could be like the MP3 market, where an inexpensive but attractive display is needed, so that area colour OLED is a superior choice to STN-LCD. However, it remains to be seen whether CSTN might actually emerge as the display of choice in these cases.

Looking further ahead


The ultimate dream of many OLED panel makers is to serve the large-screen television market. OLED is well suited to TV - it has fast speed, good colour, excellent viewing angle and high contrast ratio. TV does not require high resolution, so inkjet printing should be able to serve. The main challenges are the large size, long lifetime requirement (30,000 h), and low price point. Another hurdle is the competition from many other technologies, which is rarely acknowledged.


The TV market is already flooded with options: CRT, LCD, plasma, projection and the potential for a variety of novel technologies like SED and carbon-nanotube-based technology. Consumers, for the most part, do not care about the particular technology - they tend to look only at the picture quality and the price, followed by the size or depth. Having so many technology options makes it difficult to grab the attention of end-product OEMs and channel vendors, and display companies themselves may have to make strategic choices if they can offer multiple technologies.


Currently, OLEDs cannot be manufactured in large sizes. Even the more aggressive participants such as Samsung Electronics have announced that they plan to enter the market around 2008. More time is needed to establish manufacturing processes for large panels and to build equipment that can make such panels efficiently. Inkjet printers for large substrates are still in the beta phase.


Thus, it is likely that the first OLED TVs will be small, designed for novel locations such as the kitchen or bathroom. The TAM for this sort of TV is small, but OLEDs offer novelty. Later, as technical and manufacturing capabilities grow, OLEDs may move into more standard-sized TVs (20-30 inches, or even larger). This could happen around 2010, but only with continued investment and commitment from major players.


Beyond television lies the potential for OLED lighting. Some say that this application could be simpler because there is no need to pattern subpixels or provide a complex backplane to drive it. But the requirement for long lifetime remains, and so OLEDs must still grapple with the difficulties of organic material degradation and colour shift. These are exacerbated at the high brightness levels required for lighting applications.

Finding a niche


What OLEDs need most is a unique application that LCDs cannot serve. At this time, everything an OLED can do can also be done by an LCD - and for a lower price. Furthermore, most of the key companies developing OLEDs are also LCD players, and hence they are ramping up OLED products as part of a larger strategy that will not cannibalize their own LCD businesses.


One option for a unique product would be a flexible OLED. Flexible LCDs exist, but are less appealing than flexible OLEDs. The main difficulty with flexible LCDs is that the image quality is so strongly affected by the cell gap between the two substrates of the display. OLEDs have no cell gap challenge, although this advantage is balanced by the disadvantage of requiring a powerful barrier to protect against water in the air. While glass substrates provide such a barrier naturally, plastic allows too much water to pass and must have a barrier layer. Adequate barrier technology has not yet been developed.


Flexible OLEDs could be used in applications such as shop signage, electronic shelf labels, novel forms of advertising displays and even electronic books or paper. Most developers agree that even entry-level products are still at least 2-3 years away due to technical challenges, but this represents an important long-term option for OLEDs.

About the author


Kimberly Allen is director of display technology and strategy at iSuppli, a US-based group of market experts specializing in the semiconductor and display industries. For more information, see www.isuppli.com


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OLED firm invests in R&D facility
14 June 2006


OLED-T, the UK-based manufacturer of organic light emitting diode (OLED) materials, has invested $900,000 in an R&D facility on the Brunel University Science Park site, Uxbridge. Last month the firm raised $7m from venture funding.


The 2,000 square foot R&D facility is a chemistry laboratory which will support the production of its OLED materials known as ELAMATES and develop future

generations of materials.


According to Myrddin Jones, CEO of OLED-T, the company is a supplier OLED materials to display manufacturers in Korea, Japan and Taiwan. “The new facility will enable OLED-T to scale the production of its ELAMATE OLED materials to commercial quantities,” said Jones.


The firm also has a manufacturing and device test laboratory on the Innova Science Park in North London.


The OLED display market is predicted to grow from revenues of $500m in 2005 to more than $4.6bn by 2010.


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Next-Generation TV Screens to Debut
20 June 2006


Samsung SDI and LG.Philips LCD will start mass producing the next-generation AM OLED TV screens this fall, as profits plummet in traditional LCD and PDP screen businesses.


AM OLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode) is a thin film that emits light by using organic compounds. As it does not require a backlight to function, it is claimed to be more power- and cost-efficient than LCD (liquid crystal display) or PDP (plasma display panel) when mass-produced.


LG.Philips, the 50-50 joint venture of Korea’s LG Electronics and Philips Electronics of the Netherlands, said on Monday that it is working on an AM OLED manufacturing line in Kumi, North Kyongsang Province, and production will start in fourth quarter of the year.


“We have set the internal goal of operating the AM OLED line from the fourth quarter. There is no opposition on that,’’ the company’s public relations official Lee Sang-wook said by phone.


Samsung SDI also confirmed that it will start producing OLED panels of 2 to 2.6 inches from October in its manufacturing complex in Chonan, South Chungchong Province. Samsung SDI has invested 465 billion won in building the line.


It is believed that AM OLED will replace LCD because of its clear image, simple structure and faster response time. But so far, because of technological barriers, it has been used only for small screens used in mobile phones and other digital gadgets.


Since last year, both Samsung and LG have succeeded in developing OLED screens larger than 20 inches. Samsung Electronics even demonstrated a 40-inch OLED TV last year.


The early transition to OLED is mainly due to the lower-than-expected sales of the LCD and PDP panels. LG.Philips LCD last week halved its second quarter expectations, saying it will reduce production of LCD panels and will reconsider its future investment plans.


SDI also has seen its profit drop as the demands for traditional PDP and CRT displays slowed.


To create synergy, LG Group is expected to consolidate the OLED department in LG Electronics into LG.Philips LCD soon. “It is yet to be decided, but there are such opinions in the company,’’ said Lee of LG.Philips LCD.


The market for AM OLED is projected to grow from $831 million this year to $2 billion next year, and to $5.3 billion in 2009, according to market researcher Displaysearch.


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Konica Minolta claims OLED breakthrough
30 June 2006






As well as giving Sony its D-SLR technology, the folks at KM have been busy with OLEDs. The company just announced a device with a 10,000 hour life at 64 lumens/watt, working out to a brightness of 1,000 candelas per square meter. But not only is it bright, it can also do white.


There are hints at applications coming (think cellphones), but the idea is that OLEDs are a step nearer to escaping their niche markets (for example, in the sub screen of your DAP). Or maybe not. A bit like with DMFC fuel cells vs. lithium-ion batteries, OLEDs are one of those technologies that have a lot of potential plusses over more standard competitors (read: LCDs), but there always seems to be a major glitch or two stopping them from becoming the next big thing next year.


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AUO and CMO said to give up on OLED
18 July 2006


Both AU Optronics (AUO) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) are giving up on OLED (organic light-emitting diode) development, with AUO already suspending R&D activities for the segment while CMO's wholly own subsidiary Chi Mei Electroluminescence (CMEL) is downsizing its workforce by two thirds, due to an uncertain outlook and low yields, according to the Chinese-language Apple Daily.


AUO said the report about it suspending OLED R&D activities was false. The company is still developing OLED technology and products while planning on recruiting more workforce for the segment, sources at the company said. However, AUO declined to comment on production and capacity detail for the OLED segment since it is now in a quiet period prior to the release of its second quarter financial results.


CMO was quoted by the paper as claiming CMEL is only undergoing personnel changes and will not give up on OLED production since OLED is another strategic product for CMO.


CMO confirmed that CMEL is downsizing but declined to comment further.


AUO started investing in OLED technology in 2002, with the company claiming to be the first to introduce a-Si (amorphous silicon)-based full color OLED technology. AUO has rolled out several active-matrix (AM) OLEDs through 2006 and the company currently has two OLED lines, one producing 200×200mm substrates while the other processes 370×470mm substrates.


CMEL was established in October 2004 with a capital of NT$900 million (US$27 million). The company said it currently focuses on small- to medium-size OLED applications and aims at developing OLED TVs in the future.


CMEL plans to volume produce 2.2-inch AM OLEDs in the third quarter of 2006. CMEL's AM OLED line is an adjusted 3.5G line from CMO and the substrate size is by far the largest among industry players, according to an earlier article. The OLED maker currently produces passive-matrix (PM) OLEDs, with monthly capacity at around two-million units and yields at 80-90%, the Apple Daily reported. PM OLED is less expensive to produce than AM OLED and is ideal for applications in consumer electronics such as mobile phone, PDA, portable game console, car-use display and electronic dictionaries.


AUO said it is aiming at applying AM OLED to full-color display applications that require high resolution such as PDAs, digital cameras, monitors, notebooks and TVs. However, the yields for AM OLEDs are still low and Taiwan-based OLED makers are still striving to lower their costs and improve yield.


The OLED market grew 65% in 2005, with Taiwan taking the lead with a surge in shipments from 11 million units in 2004 to 27 million in 2005, followed by South Korea, which increased shipments from 16 million units to 22 million, followed by Japan, which posted growth from seven million units to eight million, according to market research firm Displaybank.


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Research Could Extend Life of OLEDs
9 September 2006


OLED-T has produced a material for “small-molecule” OLED displays that can extend life and improve efficiency.


“We expect at least 20 percent better lifetime and slightly better luminance efficiency,” company CEO Myrddin Jones told Electronics Weekly.


The material, dubbed EL-101 is an electron injection layer. “Ninety-nine percent of OLED displays use lithium fluoride for this layer,” said Jones. “It requires 600°C processing which has an impact on the lifetime of the other layers.”


This tops even the 400°C required to deposit the aluminum back contact. “A LiF electron injector represents the highest temperature process in the fabrication of the OLED,” said Jones.


EL-101 evaporates at 300°C. “It has less impact on lifetime, and throughput is higher because it is faster to ramp the machine up to 300 rather than 600°C,” said Jones.


The company will not disclose the make-up of EL-101 except to say it is an organic material available in powder form in kilogram quantities.


In it more expensive than the traditional electron injector. “LiF is a very cheap salt,” said Jones. “EL-101 is probably two to three times the price of LiF, but it is only used in nanometer thicknesses.”


El-101, claims Jones, like LiF, is universally applicable: “It can be used for single-color or multi-color; fluorescent or phosphorescent; active or passive matrix.”


Electron injectors are one of the layers used in OLEDs to improve efficiency. “If a device was fabricated with no electron injector layer then the drive voltage would be three times higher than with a LiF or EL-101 layer,” said Jones.


In June OLED-T introduced an electron transport layer called E246 and designed as a drop-in replacement for the incumbent aluminum quinolate but with 10 times the carrier mobility and three times the life. “It reduces operating voltage and gives you a more saturated color,” said company CTO Professor Poopathy Kathirgamanathan at the time.


A next-generation electron transport material exists in OLED-T’s labs which, said Kathirgamanathan, will yield a further 10-fold improvement in electron mobility, up to 10-3cm²/Vs. A second-generation blue emitter is also expected, doubling efficiency from 5 to 10cd/A, and “probably delivering 5-6lm/W”.


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Further Significant Progress in Polymer OLED Lifetime Announced
3 October 2006

High Efficiency Red Materials Reach Almost 100,000 Hours Lifetime


CAMBRIDGE, England, October 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/


Following quickly behind the recent announcement by Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) [Nasdaq: OLED] and Sumation® of rapid progress in the development of longer lifetime blue light emitting polymers, comes this announcement of similarly impressive progress on red materials.


Data from devices produced using these latest, solution processable, phosphorescent materials show lifetime1 of 98,900 hours from an initial luminance of 400cd/msquared, equivalent to over 1.5 million hours from 100cd/msquared.


This represents almost a doubling of the lifetime results announced as recently as March of this year.


Production of video capable OLED displays requires a full color range of red, green and blue with long lifetime and good efficiency. The efficiency of this phosphorescent red material is approximately 9cd/A, and the color co-ordinates are: (CIEx=0.67, y=0.32).


"We are now seeing tremendous momentum in our development of the full range of P-OLED materials", commented Dr David Fyfe, CEO of CDT. "This latest result demonstrates that our rate of learning and discovery is really accelerating bringing many more applications for P-OLED technology within reach in a short timeframe."


The company will be exhibiting at FPD International in Yokohama, Japan from 18th to 20th October, and will be pleased to welcome visitors at its booth - no. 461.


Note to Editors:


When 'lifetime' is discussed here, it refers to the time taken for the display/pixel to fall to half its initial stated luminance. Lifetime estimates are based on accelerated testing of simple test devices at several very high initial luminance levels, and use of these data to calculate predicted lifetimes at lower brightness levels. Translation of this single pixel data into performance in an RGB display system depends on a number of factors and requires a complex calculation and knowledge of the precise system design parameters such as aperture ratio, brightness, ink formulation and relative pixel areas.


About CDT


Cambridge Display Technology is a pioneer in the development of polymer organic light emitting diodes (P-OLEDs) and their use in a wide range of electronic display products used for information management, communications and entertainment.


P-OLEDs are part of the family of OLEDs, which are thin, lightweight and power efficient devices that emit light when an electric current flows. P-OLEDs offer an enhanced visual experience and superior performance characteristics compared with other flat panel display technologies such as liquid crystal displays, and have the key advantage that they can be applied in solution using printing processes. Founded in 1992, the company is headquartered in Cambridge, UK and listed on the US NASDAQ National Market under the symbol 'OLED'. In 2005, CDT and Sumitomo Chemical established a joint venture called Sumation® which develops, manufactures and sells P-OLED materials to the display industry.


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Outlook for OLED Market Dim in PMOLED, Rosy in AMOLED in 2007
12 October 2006


Displaybank (CEO Peter Kwon), a market research firm, says that the organic light-emitting diode (OLED) industry will observe clearly alternating joy and sorrow in 2006.


Many PMOLED manufacturers have announced their plan to reduce mass production or withdraw from the business sector due to their business downturn. Teco Optronics Co., Optotech Co. Ltd., Ness Display Co. Ltd. and Orion PDP Co. Ltd., excluding the top five to six players, have suffered deterioration in the business segment and eventually withdrew from the market. The PMOLED business seems to face the limitation in the near future without finding a new growth engine such as new clients. Therefore, the OLED industry is paying much attention to the time when AMOLEDs hit the market.


A set of withdrawal or indefinite delay news by AMOLED development specialists such as Pioneer and Sanyo have shed light on the negative outlook, but Samsung SDI and LG.Philips LCD (hereinafter called LPL) and CMEL, an OLED affiliate of CMO, are attracting attention by revealing their schedule for AMOLED mass production. Samsung SDI plans to invest 465.5 billion won ($486 million) to build an AMOLED production plant in Cheonan with the aim of launching mass production in October 2006. LPL unveiled its 2.4-inchQVGA AMOLED at the SID 2006 exhibition in the U.S. in June this year, and also announced it plan to commence mass production of AMOLEDs in the fourth quarter of 2006. In September, CMEL also disclosed its project of AMOLED mass production from the fourth quarter of this year.


The current status of PMOLEDs and AMOLEDs raises the predictions that the mainstay will migrate away from PMOLED toward AMOLED in 2007, with a slowdown in the PMOLED market and market entrance by AMOLEDs. However, there are a number of questions about the success feasibility of the AMOLED business.


Industry insiders agree with the possibility that AMOLED will dominate the next-generation display market, but they say that the time is uncertain. The success will rely on how many application manufacturers including mobile phone vendors will adopt AMOLEDs instead of TFT-LCDs, and when the AMOLED can make inroads into the 10-inch and larger panel market.


Given the circumstances, the worldwide industry is keeping an eye on whether or not the three frontrunners, Samsung SDI, LG.Philips LCD and CMEL, will ride on the stable track of AMOLED.


Whichever is right, it's doubtful that both companies' strategy for early mass production will be successful, but taking into account a variety of factors such as know-how in the FPD industry, technology accumulated through constant research, relations with demand, and all-out supports by corporations, both AMOLED makers seem to have a huge potential for growth in the market.

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12mm-thick 17-inch OLED TV
17 October 2006















Samsung SDI presented a 17-inch AMOLED TV set at KES 2006. The panel is only 1.8mm thick and the TV set is just thin as 12mm. It features a brightness of 400 candela, a contrast ratio of 1,000:1 and 170 viewing angle.


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CMEL and CMO develop 25-inch AM OLED TV panel
18 October 2006






Chi Mei EL Corporation (CMEL) announced that it has successfully employed the latest low temperature poly-silicon (LTPS) TFT LCD technology from Chi Mei Optoelectronics (CMO) together with its own organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) equipment and technology to develop a full-function, full-color 25-inch OLED TV panel.


The OLED panel is currently the world's largest LTPS TFT active matrix (AM) OLED panel and features a slim panel, wide viewing angle, high contrast and fast response time, CMEL said.


CMEL's AM OLED products are about to enter the mass production stage. CMEL is also showing a variety of new AM OLED products with the new LTPS TFT technology, including 2.0- and 3.5-inch products, at FPD International 2006 in Japan (October 18-20) and expects to have these products in mass production starting in the first quarter of next year.


CMEL is also using its 25-inch panel technology to improve the production yield for its small- to medium-size panels for 3G and digital video products.


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Analysis: OLED makers suffering under LCD competition
24 November 2006

PESSIMISM: Unless an industry niche can be found, the outlook for this small but innovative sector is less than ideal


By Lisa Wang

STAFF REPORTER


A decade ago, innovative Taiwanese flat panel display companies started investing in a cutting-edge and cost-saving organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology in an attempt to move beyond the slim profits associated with original equipment manufacturing.


Those companies, however, have all but given up hope as high technological barriers and cutthroat competition from cost-efficient liquid-crystal-display (LCD) makers have placed them deep in the red.


"Taiwanese companies hoped to make big money from manufacturing slimmer OLED displays at lower prices than LCD panels," said Roger Yu (游智超), a flat-panel industry analyst with Polaris Securities Co (寶來證券).


"But, the dream has not yet come true as progress in developing competitive products has been slow because of poor foundry yields and performance," Yu said, adding that most companies were still struggling to break even.


Low yields have prompted LCD panel makers AU Optronics Corp (友達光電) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子), which are also developing OLED technology, to cut their OLED staff numbers, according to market research DisplaySearch.


Heavy losses have driven many pure OLED manufacturers out of the market. Singapore's Ness Display closed its doors recently because it failed to attract enough capital amid falling prices to continue operations.


Back home, optical-disk maker Ritek Corp (錸德) on Wednesday was just the latest example of a firm that had chosen to opt out of the industry to concentrate on its core business. Opto Tech Corp (光磊) decided last week to close an unprofitable OLED plant citing immature market conditions and lackluster outlook. In August, home appliances maker Teco Electric & Machinery Co (東元) said it planned to move its OLED plant to China to form a joint venture with a Chinese company owned by the Sichuan government.


"Sharp price reductions and difficulties in cutting costs are the major challenges for OLED display makers," said Kevin Liao (廖顯杰), a flat-panel industry analyst with DisplaySearch.


Ritek said on Wednesday that it planned to sell an OLED manufacturing affiliate, Ritdisplay Corp (錸寶), to South Korean Kolon Industries Inc, after Ritdisplay, the world's No. 5 maker of OLED displays by revenue, had accumulated NT$4.8 billion (US$146 million) in losses since 2002.


"The deal will bring more resources for Ritdisplay and boost its core competitiveness as well as reduce financial reliance on the parent company," Ritek said in a statement.


DisplaySearch's Liao also said limited OLED equipment and component suppliers were behind slow improvements in the industry cost structure.


Technologically, OLED displays readily compete with LCDs in small-and-medium applications such as handset displays and MP3s palyers, but LCD makers are able to edge OLED suppliers out of the market by undercutting them on price.


Overall, OLED display shipments expanded by 15 percent to 16.1 million units in the second quarter of this year over last year, but revenues dropped 14 percent to US$112 million, according to a DisplaySearch tally.


"It's tough for Taiwanese companies to survive as they are smaller in scale than their rivals," Liao said.


Liao said those companies remaining in the industry were conservative about expansion plans.


Ritdisplay, established in 2000, has a capital value of NT$7.5 billion while local rival Univision Technology Inc (悠景) is worth just NT$1.8 billion.


On top of that, “the competition will intensify next year as more Chinese players are preparing to join the game,” Liao said.


Looking from a longer term perspective, Liao said there was still opportunity in the industry. To divert from direct competition with lower-priced LCD panels, OLED display manufacturers should target niche market segments such as Asian handset makers, he suggested.


But Polaris' analyst Yu said he would take a wait-and-see attitude about OLED stocks as he expected they would still have a long way to go before making significant gains.


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Universal Display and Nippon Steel boost green OLED performance
21 December 2006


December 21, 2006, Tokyo, Japan and Ewing NJ--Nippon Steel Chemical Company (NSCC) and Universal Display today announced significant enhancement in the performance of green phosphorescent OLEDs resulting from their ongoing technical collaboration.


By combining Universal Display's green phosphorescent emitter, UDC-GD48, with NSCC's new green host material, the two companies have achieved record operational lifetime for a green phosphorescent OLED device. This green OLED offers 60,000 hours of operational lifetime at an initial luminance of 1,000 candelas per square meter (cd/m(2)). The device also exhibits a high luminous efficiency of 65 candela per ampere (cd/A) and an external quantum efficiency of 18%, at 1,000 cd/m(2), both characteristic features and benefits of phosphorescent OLED technology. The color coordinates for this device in a standard bottom-emission structure are C.I.E. (0.35, 0.61).


While these color and efficiency characteristics have previously been reported, obtaining this performance in conjunction with improved operational lifetime is an important milestone for Universal Display and NSCC. This represents more than a two-fold increase in operational stability, key for commercial success, as compared to previously reported performance. The device also incorporates Universal Display's proprietary blocking layer material to achieve the reported results. UDC-GD48 is currently available from Universal Display and NSCC's new green host material will soon be available from NSCC for evaluation and use in commercial production.


As a milestone of these collaborative development efforts, UDC and NSCC have now established material systems for red and green phosphorescent OLEDs. The companies are also collaborating on the development of blue phosphorescent materials.


For more information about NSCC's host materials, please contact Masamichi Fujii . For more information about Universal Display's PHOLED materials and technology, please contact Janice K. Mahon .


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Display makers to mass produce AM OLEDs
3 January 2007


From Samsung SDI Co. to LG.Philips LCD Co., the race to mass-produce the next-generation display device called "active-matrix organic light emitting diodes" or AM OLEDs will intensify this year, industry analysts said yesterday.

Samsung SDI will start rolling out AM OLEDs in the first half of this year, though the specific timetable has yet to be decided. It will mark the display panel's official debut on the global market, company officials said.


LG.Philips LCD, which deferred production of AM OLEDs at its Gumi plant late last year pending a management decision, is expected to shortly follow suit.


AM OLEDs need no backlighting and therefore consume less power. They offer a lightweight yet powerful display panels for small digital gadgets such as mobile phones, digital cameras and portable multimedia players. The display module offers a replacement for liquid crystal displays or LCDs currently in use.


"As OLEDs function with self-luminous organic materials, they are better than thin film transistor liquid crystal displays or TFT-LCDs in terms of response time. OLEDs' response time of 1 micro second is 1,000 times faster than TFT-LCDs' 1 milli second reaction time. This feature can help OLEDs realize perfect moving images," said Song Young, an official at Samsung SDI's public relations team.


Samsung SDI plans to roll out an array of QVGA-level AM OLEDs, ranging from 2.0 to 2.6 inches, in the first half of this year. The company aims to manufacture and supply over 100 million units per year beginning next year.


It has invested a combined 460 billion won for the display's production line at its Cheonan plant, located 40 minutes by car from Seoul. The company began a trial production of AM OLEDs in October last year.


Meanwhile, Taiwanese and Japanese manufacturers are taking a "wait-and-see" attitude despite their technical readiness, suggesting they will make a move after seeing Korean display makers start plowing money in the new cutting-edge display modules.


CMEL, an affiliate of Taiwan's CMO, plans to mass produce in the first half. Toppoly of Taiwan plans for the third quarter. TMD and Sony Corp. of Japan are known to have set the timing at the second half of this year.


Industry watchers say AM OLEDs and small-sized LCDs will inevitably compete against each other, signaling "a war without bullets" in the small- and mid-sized display sector.


AM OLEDs, at this early stage of production could be a rather costly option for its buyers, mobile-phone manufacturers. The price will be about 40 percent higher than that of LCDs.


Still, the industry is upbeat on the potential for this tiny screen technology as it offers many other advantages - lightness, better screen quality, higher power efficiencies, faster response time and no optical illusions when viewed from the side.


The U.S.-based market research firm DisplaySearch projects the production of AM OLEDs will literally soar from last year's 2.39 million units to 24.84 million this year, 95.88 million in 2008, and 200 million in 2010.
 
#19 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by wanders /forum/post/0

Seems to me only a few months ago the OLED naysayers were (nay)saying that blue OLED lifetime was way too short to go to production. Now Samsung is saying that they are starting production later this year. So what breakthrough (other than salmon DNA!) did I miss in the news?


Regards to all,


Willie

yes - u did missed it ..

Quote:
The second major milestone announced is a lifetime of 150,000 hours for a fluorescent blue device based on a new material developed by CDT, and now part of the Sumation portfolio. Just eighteen months ago, CDT announced the achievement of 30,000 hours lifetime for fluorescent blue. The efficiency is also the highest recorded for a blue polyfluorene material at 10cd/A.
 
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