Digitimes has an interesting five part interview with Paul Hyland, President and CEO of Aixtron, and Dr. William (Bill) Elder, Executive Vice President at Aixtron.

From the interview -

I think the potential we’re talking about for OLED technology is still very valid...the incumbent technology getting progressively better and better and pushing new technology further out. But it will come.

The industry is still coming to terms with the chemistry of OLED and therefore the process, which means mastering the yield, the throughput, the lifetime. These are all factors that have to be addressed before OLED technology will enter the commercial market, and if the chemistry changes, then the process and the equipment have to be adjusted accordingly. I don’t think it’s open for me. I’m quite certain that OLED technology will be a player. For me, it’s a question of the timing.

Has there been any development in the last 12 months? Well, we’ve continued to work with our partners, both in terms of government and European funded programs, and commercial customers such as RitDisplay. That activity is continuing. If there is a development, then it would probably be increased interest and focus on OLED as a lighting source.

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Aixtron is to take part in the OPAL 2008 (Organic Phosphorescent lights for Applications in the Lighting market 2008) R&D project in a consortium with Osram, Philips, BASF and Applied Materials. The project will use Aixtron's Organic Vapor Phase Deposition (OVPD) technology platform.

OPAL 2008's aim is to develop OLED production technology capable of achieving a target cost of a few Euro cent per cm² for a high performance white OLED device, with the ultimate goal of introducing the new lighting technology into the market.

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Based on acceptance of the first Aixtron Gen2-OVPD system for the mass production of OLEDs by RiTdisplay Corporation in 2005, the Company plans to drive forward its strategy to introduce its OVPD technology to a broader OLED display and lighting market, with the goal to achieve revenue contributions in 2007.

Accordingly, AIXTRON expects to achieve a share of at least 3% in the small molecule (SM) OLEDs deposition equipment market (total market size of US$ 220 million by the end of 2007.

RiTdisplay has signed off the system acceptance of the first Gen2 OVPD(R) system for mass production of OLEDs. The engineering teams of RiTdisplay and AIXTRON could jointly qualify OVPD(R) technology for manufacture of OLED devices for full color display applications. The B-testing co-operation yielded OLED devices with better performance as compared to devices manufactured with conventional technology (VTE).

Dr. Yih Chang, General Manager of RiTdisplay, states: "The impressive performance of our OLEDs made by OVPD(R) has proven our investment into this new technology to be right. Use of this new leading edge technology will foster and strengthen our positioning in the OLED display market."
The qualification of the Gen2 manufacturing tool is the breakthrough for OVPD(R) technology. Based on gas phase transport and AIXTRON's proprietary Close Coupled Showerhead (CCS) technology OVPD(R) has significant advantages over conventional deposition equipment (VTE), such as precise control of deposition rates, long term process stability and reproducibility, high throughput due to high deposition rates, high yield due to excellent uniformity, low maintenance and running cost due to highly efficient material utilization etc. The gas phase process further enables realization of advanced device structures including for example graded layers. Organic Vapor Phase Deposition OVPD.

OVPD technology has been exclusively licensed to AIXTRON from Universal Display Corporation (UDC) for equipment manufacture. AIXTRON and UDC have jointly developed and qualified OVPD pre-production equipment.