Sumitomo

In an interesting article by the Financial Times, both Idemitsu Kotsan and Sumitomo executives estimate that "2012 will be the year when OLEDs hits the big times".

Idemitsu Kotsan also says that they are working on a new way to 'spray' small-molecule OLED materials. The new method should be ready by 2015. Spraying OLEDs (instead of using vapor-deposition) will mean less material loss, and thus cheaper displays. It will also make it easier to fabricate large panels.

Sumitomo is focusing on blue lifetime, and say that they will reach 50,000-60,000 hours by March 2010. 

CDT is one of the leaders in OLED research, focusing on Polymer-based OLEDs. While these OLEDs are lagging behind small-molecule OLEDs in current products (all AMOLEDs today are based on SM-OLEDs), some companies believe that P-OLEDs are actually the better tech for the future.

CDT's CEO, David Fyfe has agreed to answer a few questions we had on CDT's technology. David joined CDT in 2000 as Chairman and CEO. David saw CDT go public in 2004, and then negotiated the sale of CDT to Sumitomo for $285 million (in September 2007). David is also a director of Soligie, an electronics printing company, Acal Energy, a fuel cell technology developer and the Plastic Electronics Foundation.

Q: David - thanks for agreeing to do this interview. Since the Sumitomo acquisition, CDT has been rather quiet... can you give us an update on where's the company now, and where's it is headed?
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. 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.

CDT 14-inch OLED prototype from 2005

Q: It seems that OLED displays are finally entering the mainstream - we hear of new devices (mainly by Samsung, but also from Sony, Microsoft, LG and others) almost daily. What are your thoughts on this? what are the challenges that still exist for OLEDs?
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.

Panasonic has announced that they are developing OLEDs together with Sumitomo. They aim to make 40" (or bigger) TVs by 2010. Back in 2008, Sumitomo announced plans for OLED TVs by 2009, and were seeking partners for doing it.

Sumitomo's technology is based on CDT's P-OLED (CDT were acquired by Sumitomo back in 2007).

Panasonic also said they are partnering with other companies, but they didn't name any of them. There are rumors that one of these companies is Toshiba.

After receiving investments totaling billions of dollars over the past decade, the OLED industry is finally poised to take off. According to NanoMarkets, an industry analyst firm based here, the markets for OLED materials will reach $2.7 billion by 2015.

The Japanese government will team up with several Japanese companies to develop key-technologies for producing large-size OLED panels. The aim is to cut the development cost for the Japanese companies, to be better able to compete against Samsung and LG, and the Japanese government will pitch in around 32$M. 

There's a new OLED group that has just been formed - the OLED Association (OLED-A). The group is mananged by Barry Young (Former senior VP, Display Search).

There are ten members in the group - Cambridge Display/Sumitomo, Corning, DuPont, Kodak, eMagin, Ignis, MicroEmissive Displays, Novaled, OLED-T, Samsung SDI, and Universal Display, and OLED-A are working to add more members.

OLED-A will "provide the forum for solving common technology issues" and "developing standards for measuring and reporting performance" (materials will be an initial focus), as well as creating "a common marketing platform" to promote the cause to the display, solid-state lighting, photovoltaic, organic semiconductors, and other OLED-friendly sectors.

OLED-A's web site