DuPont builds a $30 million OLED TV pilot production line

Update: It turns out that DuPoint's facility will only produce materials, not any kind of display panels...

DuPont announced that it is building a $30 million OLED TV pilot production line at its Stine-Haskell Research Center off Elkton Road in Newark. DuPont will allocate 26 engineers and 9 professional works for the project. Delaware announced it will allocate $920,000 grant from the Delaware Strategic Fun to help fund this project. It isn't likely that DuPont actually considers establishing a full-scale OLED TV production facility in the US, the aim is probably to develop manufacturing technology.

DuPont's new pilot line will use their nozzle-printing (or "spray-printing") technology which uses a continuous stream of ink (unlike the droplets used in regular inkjet printing) to deposit OLED materials. This is a very fast process - DuPont says it can print a 50" TV in under 2 minutes, but the display isn't optimized in the sub-pixel level and is so less efficient than in other patterning technologies. But the faster throughput can lead to cheaper displays - in fact DuPont claims that this technology may make an OLED TV cheaper than an LCD TV.

Back in November 2011 DuPont announced that it has signed a licensing agreement with a leading Asian AMOLED maker for this technology, and earlier today the company said that it got $20 million in OLED license fees in 4Q 2011.

Posted: Jan 24,2012 by Ron Mertens