OLED News - Page 1

Researchers from Japan's Kyushu University developed a new technology called singlet fission that enables near-infrared OLED materials to surpass the 100% limit for exciton production - or achieve an internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of over 100%. Singlet fission was already used in OPVs, but this is the first time that it was demonstrated with OLEDs.

Achieving over 100% is possible because at 100% IQE all charges form excitons that emit light. The new technique splits the energy from a high-energy excitons into two low level ones. The new OLED emitter materials use molecules in which singlets can transfer half of their energy to neighboring molecules while keeping half of the energy for themselves - each singlet creates two triplets. The emitters emit near-infrared light.

Audi introduced a new e-tron EV crossover concept car, which includes 7" OLED virtual side mirrors (coupled with external cameras) instead of the normal mirrors.

This is not a new concept - but it seems that Audi is progressing towards bringing this design idea to commercial cars. In 2012 Audi equipped its R18 sports prototype with a 7.7" virtual rear mirror, and later announced it will bring such mirrors to future e-tron cars.

US-based Aura is a new semi-private boutique airline. Aura announced its new aircraft design, and two different classes - first and wave. The wave class includes OLED displays in the windows (Aura says these will be transparent OLEDs).

The wave class will also include a large tiled OLED display on the ceiling (as you can see in the image above), which will simulate the sky. These look like LG's commercial OLED TV installation.

In 2016 China-based Everdisplay (EDO) started to construct a 6-Gen flexible AMOLED fab in Shanghai. In August 2017 EDO said that it finished the building's main steel frame roof, and yesterday EDO announced that it has finished constructing the building and the cleanrooms, and it has started to install the production equipment - a month earlier than it originally planned.

EDO's new fab will have a capacity of 30,000 monthly substrates (1500 x 1850 mm) and will be used to produce small and medium sized flexible AMOLEDs (1 to 15 inch). EDO aims to begin trial production in January 2019 and mass production in 2021.

Samsung Display is expected to begin foldable OLED production towards the end of 2018, as Samsung Electronics plans to begin selling foldable phones in the beginning of 2019. A new report from Korea's ETNews gives some new information on Samsung's plans.

According to ETNews, Samsung will soon be ready to start producing foldable OLEDs in a new pilot line in its A3 flexible OLED line. In 2018 the company will only be able to produce 100,000 units, and in 2019 the capacity will be about 1 million. It seems that Samsung is in a hurry to have a product out, and is currently ready to start production with low yields and high production costs (according to GBI estimates, the first foldable phone/tablet will cost over $1,800).

The Fraunhofer FEP announced that it developed a new technology to produce ultra-smooth polymer films. The new technology can be used to produce low-defect density films in a roll-to-roll based process, suitable for a wide range of applications - including encapsulation films, touch layers and as OLED substrates.

This technology was developed as part of the EU-funded OptiPerm project. The Fraunhofer researchers say that this new innovative process does not require any special processing environment and could be used under standard factory conditions.