OLED: towards a mature industry - interview with Gildas Sorin, CEO of Novaled AG

Novaled claims to deliver the highest power efficiencies in combination with longest lifetimes and holds several OLED world records.

Novaled, established 5 years ago, is located in Dresden, Germany. Dresden city is becoming the biggest European organic electronic centre with a network of university, R&D centers and companies acting in the organic fields.

Gildas Sorin is Novaled's CEO since since August 2003. Previously he was with Philips Electronics for five years as vice president of the Display Division and, in parallel, general manager of the Philips Plasma Displays group. Prior to that, he served at Thomson Multimedia for 20 years in various executive and management roles. Mr. Sorin attended Thomson University and holds a degree in senior management.

* Hello Gildas, thanks for agreeing to do this interview. Recently there is a lot of hype about OLEDs. We are hearing of large investments by Sony, Samsung and LG, and plans for OLED TVs are stated. Do you think this time it is for real? or will we see more delays?
Every year in the past the message was “OLED business is starting next year”. This was said for several years, but now it is real indeed. The OLED industry is entering its mature phase; OLED technology has reached a performance level acceptable for the market in display and lighting to start. The time to make only the “noisy” announcements is over as the industry requires real performances. Different parameters have to be combined for a successful market entry. Therefore Novaled is striving continuously for the best combination of power efficiency together with the necessary lifetime.

* You guys are working closely on P-OLEDs with CDT/Sumation, and also on PHOLEDs with UDC and Ciba. What do you think about these two kinds of OLEDs? Which one is closer to commercialization?
Until recently OLED was split between small molecule deposited with vacuum tools on the one hand and polymer using printing technologies on the other hand. These two approaches start to converge with the goal to have the most appropriate production process for the application.

Novaled is working on a hybrid approach with CDT/Sumitomo Chemicals mixing the Sumation polymer emitting material together with the small molecule material of Novaled. This will bring more efficient polymer OLED in top emission mode.

* Can you give some more information about your collaboration with UDC?
Novaled’s technology provides better power efficiency to all OLED structures and for this reason Novaled is cooperating with the main emitting material makers. One of them is UDC which develops efficient green and red OLED emitter material. By using Novaled PIN OLED TM structure and materials the UDC performance is doubled.

* In the beginning of 2008 you announced a collaboration with Ciba, on long-lifetime PHOLEDs. Any news in that area?
Ciba, like other key organic material players, develops phosphorescent emitting material specially dedicated to the Novaled PIN OLED TM structure. The PIN technology is necessary to reach highest power efficiency and is expected to play an important role in industry standards.

* The OLLA project (which you were involved in) was just concluded, and a new project has been announced - OLED100.eu. Can you give us more details about your role in those projects?
The European lighting industry supported by the European Union launched a program called OLLA in 2004 to develop the OLED technology for lighting applications. Due to its freedom of design, OLED lighting technology offers many possibilities for new lighting applications whilst achieving substantial energy savings. OLLA was a consortium of 24 companies from 8 European countries such as Philips, OSRAM and of course Novaled, with funding of 12M€ from the EU.

Novaled has been the centre of this program providing the necessary power efficiency with its PIN OLED TM technology. A device with an efficacy of 50.7 lumens per watt and lifetime of 10.000 hours was delivered by the end of the program in June 2008.

The new program OLED100.eu is now launched with the mission to reach 100 lm/W and a lifetime of 100.000 h. This program is centered on Novaled technology as well.

* One of the main objectives of OLED100.eu is 100 lm/W, in 3 years. UDC already claims to have 102lm/W today. So why will it take 3 years for you guys to achieve that?
The time of laboratory announcements is over. Performance of 100 lm/W with no lifetime can not be seen as an industrial result. Novaled already announced an OLED with 160 lm/W last year. We are now committed to real performance which can be used for commercial products, having the best compromise between lifetime and efficiency.

* OSRAM is showing beautiful OLED lamp prototypes. What do you think about those? When will be able to actually buy them, do you think?
OSRAM has made a clever move to show the potential of the OLED technology for lighting through its bringing two first products on the market.

It is necessary to show to consumers, not yet aware of the OLED advantages, the benefit of the real product. We are confident that the OLED business in lighting will take off in 2009.

* Another interesting development in white-light OLEDs in Lumiotec, the new Japanese JV. Are you involved with this new company?
The creation of Lumiotec illustrates the revolution in the lighting industry currently moving from vacuum (lamps, neons) toward solid state (LED and now OLED products).

This radical change of technology will bring new players into the lighting field.

We are in permanent contact with Prof. Kido, supporter of the PIN OLED technology, who is driving the technical development of Lumiotec.

* Are there any products that currently use OLEDs with your IP inside?
The OLED display and lighting industry is now in the starting phase. We are working with several key players in both fields but currently under NDA.

* You are also licensing your tech for Solar cells. Any news in that front?
You can imagine that Novaled technology capable of highest power efficiently structure for emitting light can also provide power efficiency advantages to organic structures absorbing light and for creating energy.

Dresden, Germany, is the biggest European center for organic electronics. One sister company of Novaled, Heliatek, is making significant progress in solar cells using Novaled technology.

Novaled is working with other partners in this organic solar cell field as well.

* What are the major challenges still facing OLEDs?
We are just entering the industrial phase of this technology. Performance and lifetime are now at an acceptable level. Further progress requires the increase of cooperation among the actors: technology and material providers, equipment and device makers. The time for solo working is over.

* When do you think we'll be able to actually buy a commercial OLED TV?
The first Sony OLED TV is available in Japan since end of last year. We are confident that the product offer in the display market will be extended starting next year with the arrival of additional key players.

* Where do you see the display market in 5 years?
OLED is the natural evolution of the LCD. It brings much better picture performance (even better than Plasma) and new design opportunities, while reusing the major part of the LCD panel: the active matrix (TFT). To some extent OLED is an LCD display.

Having passed the necessary learning phase, OLED displays will be cheaper than current LCDs and enable more appealing products. It’s a win-win situation for both LCD makers and consumers.

Gildas, thank you for this interview. I wish both you and Novaled success, and I'm sure we'll be hearing more of your technology soon.

Ron Mertens, oled-info.com, July 2008.

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