)
Q: Can you name some products that use your OLED displays?Mobile phone only. Current capacity is 7k sheets (365 x 460) per month, which is equivalent to 200k pcs of 3" size.
Q: You have been showing a 15" OLED TV prototype since the beginning of 2009... and you said it can begin production by June 2009. Which is now.. will you start making these panels? Or are you still waiting for a customer?So far two mobile phones tailored to SKT in Korea.
Q: LG has allocated more money to OLEDs in the beginning of the year. Are you increasing production?During the period of Dec 2009-Jan 2010, our customer will launch 15" OLED TV in Korean market. Thereafter global roll-out follows.
Q: We know that you're working with UDC on Flexible OLEDs. You have commented in the past that you see flexible OLED products in the future. Is this still on? what kind of products do you envision?Production facilities are being installed in Paju. New setup will commence production next year alongside incumbent one in Gumi.
UDC is as you know military application, where we have no further information. Q: Your phone division recently said that they're not going to launch an OLED phone. Can you give more info on that decision? What has to happen in order for you to incorporate OLEDs in your phone?Flexible OLED project is still on. Flexible display would offer free hands to designers and brand-new applications are enabled, however main technical constraints still keep the technology immature for commercial deployment. Target for
Q: You have started to work on OLED deposition equipment together with Samsung. How is this coming along? Should we expect more cooperation in OLED programs?OLED could not offer high resolution above 230ppi in the past. And cost was very high. They are main reasons for no acceleration. Things are being changed. Our phone division is mulling over OLEDs in every aspects. Leveraging just one of three key attributes of OLED, vivid picture quality, slim form factor especially integrated touch and eco-friendly power savings, OLED phones will not only survive entrenched LCD ones but position as a premium segment.
Q: What are the main challenges still ahead for OLEDs?Bigger size OLED equipment development programs are there. It's not that direct cooperation between two companies. But no reason to disregard cooperation in OLED with Samsung. Cooperation partner is not confined to Korean companies.
Q: Samsung have recently joined the OLED lighting race. Do you have plans to do OLED Lighting too?Main challenges are depending on what sort of application OLED is destined to. For example, image sticking is more critical to Notebook. Overall higher cost than LCD mainly stemmed from unreached economy of scale is the key challenge.
Thank you Won, thanks for the interview, I wish you good luck, and we're all waiting to see your 15" OLED TVs by the end of the year!Two different perspectives coexist for a while.
OLED's current acceleration in growth is based on mobile handsets, where it is arguably better looking and more power-efficient that LCDs, but those are incremental improvements. Most mobile handsets use LCDs, where they perform very effectively. We could argue that the reason OLED has grown so slowly (until now) is because they were "nice" rather than "necessary," while costing more than the incumbent display (of course).
Or,
As you can see OLED confers massive advantages, the main problem is in productionising the technology. They are starting with small screens, just as LCD did, and then gradually working their way up. But already they can be found in a number of production devices. So every LCD device will become obsolete, as the features and benefits of OLED devices are so overwhelmingly superior. And games will look so much better.
Q: Will the new printing technology also allow OLED lighting panels? Or is it just for displays?Epson is currently considering a variety of options regarding the commercialization of this technology, but at this point no specific announcements have been made about plans. We see 2012 as being the year that 37"+ OLED TVs will be launched by various makers, and 2015 as the year that sales will really take off for this market.
Q: Back in 2004, you signed an agreement with Universal-Display to co-develop inkjet OLED printing. Is the new tech part of this agreement? Are you using PHOLED materials or IP?This technology was designed specifically with displays in mind. It may be possible to apply it to the production of lighting panels too, but there may not be many benefits to using the inkjet process as OLED lighting uses a single color.
Q: In 2007 you said you will begin to make OLED panels (the aim there was to make large 8" panels). Is this still on track? Will Seiko-Epson be making medium sized panels? When?Epson's relationship with UDC is still strong and research is ongoing, and we published a paper at SID 2009 on P2OLED small molecule systems with UDC's assistance.
This paper is about the status of Printed OLEDs. Epson says that the biggest issues with printed OLEDs has been significantly improved. They give examples of a polymer-based OLED device with 45,000 hours lifetime, and a phosphorescent small-molecule system that has 40 cd/A efficiency.
Epson does have the capability to produce these panels, and also demonstrated them last year at a display exhibitions in Japan. Research about commercialization continues, but at this point no announcements have been made about suitable applications for such products. As with larger panels, cost/benefit issues remain.
Mr Satoru, Thank you very much! I hope we'll see large sized OLED TVs by Epson soon, maybe even before 2012...This inkjet technology was designed with large-size panels in mind. R&D continues on other methods and technologies for other applications too.
Kodak OLED technology will be featured on Green Magazine TV, a show produced by WDCC TV and airing on major networks.{video won't embed due to forum coding problem}
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------•A red P2OLED with CIE (0.67, 0.33), an efficiency of 10 candela per ampere (cd/A) and an operating lifetime of 20,000 hours, to 50% of initial luminance of 1,000 nits
•A green P2OLED with CIE (0.33, 0.62), an efficiency of 34 cd/A and an operating lifetime of 25,000 hours.
Why is OLED research important?OLEDs are solid-state lighting devices that work in a similar way to their inorganic cousins. A typical OLED is composed of two layers of organic material deposited on a transparent substrate, sandwiched between an anode and a cathode terminal. One of the layers is emissive and transports electrons from the cathode; the other layer is conductive and transports holes from the anode. When a current is passed through these layers, light is emitted via electron-hole pair recombination.
Unlike their inorganic counterparts, OLEDs can be easily structured to show patterns of colour or homogeneous white light and the layers that make up the device can be deposited on large areas.
How well do you expect OLEDs to penetrate the lighting market?OLEDs have the potential to become even more efficient than energy-saving bulbs. More than a quarter of electricity consumption in the EU is due to lighting, so an energy-efficient substitute is an important area of research. One of the targets of the OLED100.eu project is to build OLEDs with an efficacy value of 100 lm/W.
When efficient OLEDs are available at mass-production costs, they can be used for a multitude of applications in lighting. OLEDs offer new design options and integration possibilities because they could be built to cover large areas, they are extremely thin and they can be made transparent or flexible. The brightness and colour of OLEDs are fully adjustable, which creates a new way of decorating and personalizing people's surroundings.
What are the main applications and on what timescales will they occur?
There are two main application areas: displays and lighting. Small OLED displays already enjoy widespread application in portable devices such as mobile phones, MP3 players and personal digital assistants. Larger display devices are beginning to emerge on the market. For example, Sony has announced a 27 inch OLED television scheduled to hit the market in 2009.
OLEDs for lighting applications have completely different requirements. These OLEDs do not consist of many small pixels, but of one large emitting area. As a result, the device efficiency must be much higher. At first OLED lighting will appear in niche applications, but more sophisticated products will appear over time.
The vision is to have OLED tiles mounted on walls or ceilings to give a large uniform emitting area. Transparent OLEDs could also be incorporated into windows, which allow daylight to pass through during the day and emit light at night.
What will the next breakthrough be?OLED lighting is on the verge of commercialization. There is an OLED lamp available from the designer Ingo Maurer in Germany (it's based on Osram OLEDs) and Philips offers a technology kit that contains several OLEDs in various shapes and colours along with an electrical driver for a plug-and-play solution. These are not yet mass products but they indicate that OLED lighting is ready for the market. As the technology progresses, so too will the range of applications: from room and office lighting through to decorative and design-oriented lighting.
What is the most important recent advance and what hurdles remain?
The increase in efficiency of white OLEDs to a level that is comparable to that of a compact fluorescent lamp means that OLEDs are now much more efficient than halogen lamps and incandescent bulbs. The lifetime of OLEDs has also increased drastically to values of greater than 10,000 hours, making OLEDs appealing candidates for certain niche lighting applications.
But for general lighting purposes, OLED efficiency as well as lifetime must be improved further. In addition, the size of the emitting area has to be increased in order to fully utilize this unique feature. Therefore, production processes and device architectures are needed to enable uniform current distribution over the complete area as well as high reliability. From a commercialization point of view, mass-manufacturing equipment and processes have to be installed and developed.
For more information about the OLED100.eu project, visit www.oled100.eu/homepage.asp.A breakthrough is hard to predict. The OLED100.eu project is working to develop OLED technology further so that we will reach efficacy values of 100 lm/W, lifetime values of 100,000 hours and an OLED size of 100 × 100 cm. A breakthrough in the field of blue efficient phosphorescent emitters with a long lifetime would help us on that journey.
We plan to produce 32-inch OLED panels for TVs in 2012. The commercial success of OLEDs hinges on how it shows its superiority compared to LCD technologies." At the question why LG Display doesn't want to produce smaller OLED panels the LG CEO said:"
We will focus on TV panels rather than cell phone panels because the larger the display, the more efficient the OLED technology." LG Display's investment in OLED is huge, so plans the company to hiring 1700 people this year."
CDT is also working very closely with Semprius of North Carolina, USA to develop single crystal silicon TFT structures on which P-OLED devices can be deposited and driven – using Semprius’ proprietary stamping technology.Since the merger of CDT into Sumitomo Chemical in September 2007, CDT has grown substantially and received considerable capital investment to enable it to remain a leading developer of P-OLED technology. It works very closely with SCC laboratories in Japan and most recently has been transferring manufacturing process knowhow to SCC's own P-OLED manufacturing development line, recently commissioned at Ehime on Shikoku, Japan.
CDT in partnership with SCC has made large strides in materials lifetimes and efficiencies. SCC prefers to take a lower profile in announcing these advances since its business model is to work with selected display maker partners in a collaborative, confidential relationship. We have also made big strides in the development of top emitting structures and in printing P-OLED displays. SCC's strategy is that CDT will continue to be its leading development center for P-OLED technology with Ehime scaling process technology to a yielding process status.
announced that it has “cracked” the issues around inkjet printing of OLED displays and is moving now to commercialise that technology in a business model that is not altogether clear but may well involve partnerships with other display makers.Sony broke the logjam of resistance to the adoption of OLED in large displays by major display makers with the introduction of its XEL-1 11” OLED TV in 2007. Samsung SDI’s investment in small screen OLED production in 2007, based on LTPS backplanes was another major impetus. Since then, Chi Mei has brought on small OLED screen capacity, TMD (now wholly owned by Toshiba) has built an OLED line to manufacture small screens, LG Display will start up their Gen 3.5 line late this year and if press reports are to be believed, Toppoly will commission their capacity with Nokia as a lead customer and Panasonic have a major OLED development program for large OLED displays.
Samsung has rationalised the OLED interests of Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI by the formation of Samsung Mobile Displays. In other words the major players are staking out an OLED future, some in small screens and some first in small and then targeting large screens (TVs).
Most recently, Seiko Epson has
Q: You say that inkjet-printing OLEDs is the future, and printing SM-OLEDs is more difficult than printing P-OLEDs. Why is that?The barriers that face OLEDs are as follows:
- Small molecule OLED materials performance seems to now be at a level that satisfies the majors BUT it is clear to most of them that while vacuum deposition of these materials thru’ shadow masks is OK up to Gen 4 substrate size, beyond Gen 4 it is impractical (indeed Samsung Mobile Displays, Chi Mei and LG are or will process using ½ cut Gen 3.5 or Gen 4 i.e masking the substrate in two separate operations. Nothing could more clearly show the limits of shadow masking. Thus display makers who aspire to make TVs from substrates of Gen 5.5 and larger are looking at printed solutions.
- While lifetimes and efficiencies for P-OLED are now sufficient for handheld device performance and both red and green lifetimes and efficiencies are fully acceptable for TV performance, blue still lags requirements in lifetime for TV. Given the current rate of progress this is expected to be no longer an issue within the next two years.
- There has been skepticism regarding the development status of inkjet printing equipment and print heads and fitness for large scale manufacturing. However, this is evaporating as experience grows of inkjet printing color filters in a number of display makers and Epson’s announcement at SID has kindled considerable interest. Dupont claims success with nozzle printing in partnership with Dai Nippon Screen.
Given the very superior characteristics of OLEDs compared to LCD and Plasma, I expect it only to be a matter of a couple of years before we see OLED TVs being offered by a number of industry players.
Q: UDC claims that 'virtually-all' AMOLEDs use their tech. When will we also see AMOLED based on your P-OLED tech?Our view has always been that polymer bridging units would be essential to long life and high efficiency of emitters which dry from PRINTED droplets. We at CDT have spent the last three years bringing the lifetimes of inkjet printed P-OLEDs to the same level as spin coated P-OLEDs. Virtually all the data that is public for solution processed SMOLEDs is from spin coated data and what data is available from printed SMOLEDs suggests Dupont (and we have information - UDC also) is struggling with the same issue as we first addressed three years ago.
Q: Panasonic announced that they are teaming up with Sumitomo for OLED TVs. Will these be using P-OLEDs? When can we except a P-OLED TV on the market?All the commercial OLED at the moment is small molecule. UDC have been supplying the red material to Samsung, LG and maybe Chi Mei but not I believe to Sony. Rumor has it that their green material is finally acceptable (suffered from instability prior to this) and that Samsung will adopt to further benefit power consumption. Sumation has red and green polymer based material which is every bit as good as UDC 's vacuum deposited performance so it is just a question as to when the printing technology is deemed fit for mass manufacturing.
Q: TMDisplay is now focusing on OLEDs, after Toshiba bought out Matsushita's part. Are they working on P-OLEDs still?Panasonic officially denies that the press release was theirs but detail in it suggests it was.
Note - according to Nikkei.com, Panasonic has an extensive inkjet-printing PLED program. They aim to release PLED TVs at around 2012.
Q: Any updates on the Semprious JV on printing tech?Toshiba/TMD will be working on both SMOLED and PLED technologies. The Toshiba influence in TMD was always pro-PLED but I have not seen them since the demerger from Panasonic so am not up to date with the Toshiba strategy.
Q: I wonder what are your thoughts on OLED lighting - it seems like a very exciting application for OLEDs. Will CDT be a player in this market?Semprius – making excellent progress in this technology of printing the TFTs (TFTs patterned on Si wafer then released by etching and lifted from mother wafer and stamped onto the OLED display substrate resulting in single crystal TFTs – ideal for OLED driving.
Thanks David for this interesting interview... I wish you and CDT good luck!OLED lighting – yes we are putting substantial effort into materials development for this application (PLED white for example but also the RGB approach is being pursued by some lighting companies). Efficiency is the issue and in my view so will processing technology. Some believe that you cannot get the economics good enough with high-vacuum processing to compete in mass lighting markets – back to the same issue as confronts small molecule in the display field.
