Flexible OLEDs

LG announces a 2.6mm thick LED LCD TV

oled — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:31:31 -0500

LG has announced a new LED LCD TV, that's only 2.6mm thick. That's even thinner than Sony's XEL-1 OLED TV! The new TV is 42", weights only 4Kg (!) and has a 120Hz refresh rate. A few years ago, one of the advantages of OLEDs were being thin and light, but LCD has advanced very quickly in that respect - although OLEDs can be made much thinner, it doesn't seem to really matter any more, at least for TVs. Unless of course they'll start making rollable, flexible OLED TVs...

LG 2.6mm thick LED LCD

Via Gizmodo

PolyPhotonix demos an OLED dress

oled — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 02:21:54 -0500

UPDATE: it turns out that this is not an OLED dress at all! It is using EL panels, made by Elumin8 back in 2005. Here's more information...

UK's PolyPhotonix is showing an 'OLED Dress', designed by Gareth Pugh. The dress was exhibited at the launch of the UK's "Plastic Electronics Strategy' (the $32 million investment in plastic-electronics announced in July). The UK announced that by September 2010, they will begin prototype production of flexible OLED Lighting panels and low-cost long-life solar cells.

PolyPhotonix OLED dress

PolyPhotonix are working toward polymer-based OLED Lighting panels. Their first production line is already active (that's where they made the OLED panels for the dress).

Via Photonics.com

ITRI shows a new flexible color OLED prototype

oled — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:11:41 -0500

Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is showing a new flexible 4.1" color OLED display. They say that it's more flexible and 'softer' than their previous prototypes.

ITRI is also showing new e-paper displays.

Via PCWorld

Researchers drive an OLED display using Carbon Nanotubes

oled — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:04:35 -0500

Researchers from the University of Southern California has created a large functional array of transistors made using simple solution-processing methods from carbon nanotubes. These have been used to drive a simple 4" OLED display, and the group is now working towards a 'truly integrate' OLED display that is both flexible and transparent.

Carbon Nanotubes is a promising material for making control cibruit for displays - they are efficient, and can be used to make flexible and transparent displays. Now the USC researchers have found an 'easy' way to make large arrays of transistors with good performance.

Via MIT Technology Review

UDC and the FDC enhance their collaboation on flexible OLEDs for the US army

oled — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:24:31 -0500

Universal Display (FDC) and the Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University announced that they have strengthened their collaboration to extend to the joint fabrication of prototype active-matrix PHOLEDs on flexible plastic substrates for the U.S. Department of Army. In addition, Universal Display announced that the company has been awarded a $650,000 U.S. Army Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II Enhancement contract to support this work.

UDC and the FDC believe that the enhanced relationship will accelerate the demonstration of the flexible AMOLEDs. Earlier in 2009, they have already demonstrated a 4.1" monochrome QVGA PHOLED display.

EU patent office rejected CDT's challenge of a core UDC flexible OLED patent

oled — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:28:04 -0500

UDC says that the European Patent Office has rejected an opposition to one of their core flexible OLED patents in Europe. The opposition was filed by Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) back in 2006.

Source: UDC's conference call (via Seeking-Alpha)

Kyocera stops its OLED program

oled — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:30:58 -0500

It appears that Kyocera has decided to stop its OLED program, and they dissolved their OLED subsidiary. Kyocera were working together with UDC towards OLEDs for mobile phones, including flexible OLEDs.

Kyocera EOS flexible phone concepts

GE: roll-to-roll OLED Lighting panel printing is "real", reached over 90% yield

oled — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:35:23 -0400

GE is working since 2003 on roll-to-roll OLED printing (of flexible and transparent OLED lighting panels). Dr Yan from GE says that in 2007, they had fairly high defects, around 65% yield. Today GE says hat their yield is between 90%-95%.

One of the biggest issues GE is tackling is the flexible barrier layer to protect the OLED devices. GE has developed an "Ultra High Barrier" (UHB) by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The performance that has been achieved is low 10-5g/m2/day, with good transparency and adhesion.

Dr Yan says that roll-to-roll organic printing is real, and OLED lighting is getting closer. OLEDs are still around 15 times more expansive than conventional lighting, but the price will drop in time, and OLEDs will get cheaper than LEDs because of roll-to-roll printing and potentially cheaper materials.

IDTechEx believes that it will take between 5 to 10 years for OLEDs to become cost effective. But even before that OLEDs can be used in high-value products and niches.

Via IDTechEx

Visionox shows new OLED lighting and display prototypes

oled — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:48:09 -0400

Visionox (a Chinese company) is showing new 'decorative' OLED lighting and display prototypes. There's an OLED lamp, and an OLED digital photo frame.

Visionox say they have achieved the following technology breakthroughs:

Long lifetime (over 100,000 hours halftime at brightness of 1000 cd/m2) fluorescent white OLEDs with a composite blue emitting structure.
Highly efficient hybrid OLEDs with an efficiency of over 40 lm/W at the brightness of 1000 cd/m2 without any light out-coupling technology.
Flexible OLED lighting and transparent OLED lighting samples.

Visionox say that their decorative OLED-Lighting products are actually available in small volumes. They hope to enter the general lighting markets in a few years.

The lamps look very much like the TOPLESS project lamp prototypes (shown back in August).

UDC Awarded U.S. Army SBIR Contract Extension for Flexible OLED Displays Built on Metal Foil

oled — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:44:01 -0400

Universal Display Corporation has been awarded a 334K$ extension to a US army Small-Business-Innovation-Research (SBIR) phase III contract. UDC will continue to work on their flexible OLED display technology, and will deliver new prototype flexible displays built on metal foil (using amorphhous-silicon backplanes). The new displays will also be encased in new and thinner housing (the old ones were pretty bulky, as can be seen in the photo below).

UDC is working on this together with LG Display and L-3 display systems. They will focus on the design and performance of the OLED displays. The technology is being evaluation by the US Department of Defense for military applications such as a wrist-mounted display for soldiers.