Ceelite is working on large white-light flexible displays. "CeeLites" are just 1/8" thick and use up just 4 watts of power per square foot, but can be made into banners 12 feet long and 30 inches high. Rather than OLEDs, they use light-emitting capacitors that emit electricity into a phosphorescent substrate. They won't be made into high-def TVs anytime soon, but they can be contained in simple plastic, which makes them more easy to bring to market than OLEDs.
Mr. Sidney Rosenblatt, Universal Display’s Chief Financial Officer, discussed and demonstrated the Company’s new white lighting concept. Supported, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant, researchers at Universal Display recently developed a novel OLED lighting prototype that emits white light energy-efficiently when turned on and becomes transparent when turned off.With a power efficiency of 45 lumens/Watt (lm/W) demonstrated to date and the possibility of achieving up to 150 lm/W with additional development in the future, white phosphorescent OLED lighting has the potential to lead to significant energy savings and additional environmental or ‘green’ benefits. Additionally, the very thin and transparent form factor of this new lighting concept offers numerous design advantages that may enable a variety of novel uses as compared to existing incandescent and fluorescent lighting products.
Energy efficient technologies and ‘green’ solutions for every day use have gained prominence as fiscal concerns have joined with environmental ones, said Mr. Rosenblatt. Developed, in part, for the U.S. Department of Energy Solid State Lighting initiative, this transparent white OLED lighting panel combines our energy-efficient PHOLED phosphorescent and TOLED transparent OLED technologies into a very exciting lighting concept with a thin and light form factor. Amongst the many new prospective applications, one can imagine that these panels may someday replace standard office windows to provide lighting when day-lighting is insufficient.
Enabled by the Company’s high-efficiency PHOLED technology, which offers up to a 4:1 power advantage over existing fluorescent OLED technology, white OLEDs are seen by the DOE as a leading candidate for next-generation lighting. Universal Display is currently engaged in contract research with the DOE to work in a number of key performance areas for OLED lighting. Under this specific program, lead by Dr. Brian D’Andrade, the Company demonstrated an efficient white OLED with the added feature of being transparent when turned off.
The original OLED keyboard "optimus" has a price of 1,564$. Now Art.Lebedev are offering more models of the keyboard, which will cost less and have less OLED displays.
The differences between the models boil down to how many keys integrate OLEDs. $1564 buy a full LED version with 113 LED keys. 47 active OLED keys (all letter keys) will ring up at $999, 10 OLED keys (function keys) will cost $599 and if one OLED, integrated in the space bar, is enough, you will have to pay $462.
NexTech FAS' Advantage Series coating systems offer high performance extrusion (spinless) coating of liquid materials onto substrates during the manufacture process of Flat Panel Displays. The systems, which are currently supplied for Gen 2 through Gen 8 panel sizes, are capable of coating a wide variety of process chemistries, including tough-to-coat OLED materials which are often deposited at submicron thicknesses with stringent uniformity and environmental requirements.
The customer originally purchased NexTech FAS' equipment line in the third quarter of 2006 and later placed a follow-up order in the second quarter of 2007. The Advantage II Extrusion Coating system is designed to work in a fully-automated and controlled environment and is being implemented in a pilot/R&D line at the customer's site. The use of these tools enables the customer to further its R&D objectives and optimize its development process. This order paves the way for potentially significant future equipment orders used in the process and development of OLED displays and technology
Universal Display Corporation today reported significant progress in the development of P2OLED printable, phosphorescent OLED materials for use with solution-based manufacturing processes, which display manufacturers consider a prospective solution for the cost-effective production of large-area OLED displays.
Reported in a joint paper with Seiko Epson Corporation (Epson) given today at the Society for Information Display’s 2007 International Display Workshop (IDW) Conference in Sapporo, Japan, these advances are the result of a three-year joint development program during which the two companies focused on the successful demonstration of Universal Display’s P2OLEDs for application to Epson’s proprietary ink-jet printing process technology.
Given by Epson’s Takuya Sonoyama, the paper reported progress in red, green and blue P2OLED device performance in spin-coated devices and ink-jet printed devices. Demonstrating the high luminous efficiency of PHOLED technology, the team made significant progress in extending the operating lifetimes of its red and green material P2OLED systems: Red with CIE(0.66, 0.33), luminous efficiency of 9 cd/A and > 50,000 hours of operating lifetime to 50% of initial luminance (at 500 cd/m2) and green with CIE(0.33, 0.63), 35 cd/A and > 50,000 hours (at 1000 cd/m2). The team also reported data for a new sky blue P2OLED with CIE(0.19, 0.40), 18 cd/A and > 3,000 hours (at 500 cd/m2). In addition, results with ink-jet printed P2OLED devices were reported which demonstrate the excellent film-forming ability of the small molecule layers. Ink-jet printed green P2OLED devices were also demonstrated to have the same efficiency as those of the spin-coated control P2OLEDs following an in-depth study of solvent selection and process optimization.
Universal Display’s PHOLED technology and materials, which offer up to four times higher energy efficiency than traditional OLED systems, are today being used in products manufactured using conventional vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE) equipment. P2OLED materials and technology, based on this same PHOLED technology, are designed for use with solution-based processes such as ink-jet printing.
Gizmodo has an exclusive video from UDC - a couple of their flexible screens being attacked by hammers, and surviving. It's a bit silly, but it's cool nonetheless. One of the screens is the one they announced together with LG in May 2007.
In november 2007 Sony has started to sell their 11" OLED TV (the XEL-1). This is an exciting move by Sony, but this cannot be considered a real commercial OLED TV. They are only producing 2,000 of those units monthly, the price is extremly high - around 1,800$ for a 11" TV (and Sony admits they are losing money on each unit). Even the power consumption of those TVs is rather high - higher than compatiable LCDs.
Samsung is also deep into OLEDs, and they are currently producing small AMOLED panel (~2"), expecting to sell more than 2 million panels in Q4 2007. Samsung has said they will make 21" OLED monitors by 2009, and will have 42" Full HD TVs by 2010.
CMEL (spinned off Chi Mei Optoelectronics) is devoted to OLEDs, and are also making AMOLED panels today. CMEL expects to offer 32" OLED TVs during 2010. CMEL are making quite a bit of noise lately - with their AMOLED panels and also showing off a 25" prototype. CMEL is using UDC's PHOLED materials in their displays.
The Gizmodo team paid a visit to Universal Display, and they have an interest account of it, complete with photos and a video.
They discuss the different ways of producing the OLED screen - Vacuum Thermal Evaporation,Organic Vapor Phase Deposition, Organic Vapor Jet Printing, and altogether it's a good read.
