In April 2008, we had the chance of interviewing Mary Kilitziraki, Fast2Light's project manager. Fast2Light is an integrated (9 companies, 3 research institutes and 2 universities) R&D project that aims to research and develop light emitting foils based on OLED tech.

Q: What are the major goals of the Fast2Light project? What will you consider to be a big success in the project?

Fast2Light aims to lay the foundations for marrying large-area roll-to-roll technologies with the field of organic electroluminescence, for all necessary layers in an OLED device on foil. We aim to set in place all the experimental platforms that when integrated will produce a high quality lighting foil. Yet, these technology platforms can be used in other electronic devices. We will indeed think ourselves as successful if we develop and master the new large-area processes and demonstrate these in a 30cmx30cm lighting foil in 3 years time. But equally important, one of the successes of the project will be the exploitation of our results, on platform level, in other fields of electronic devices.

DisplaySearch's recent OLED Technology report results: OLEDs are expected to surge 69% to more than $826.5 million in 2008, and then grow by 83% in 2009 and 53% in 2010

as Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays become mainstream.    

Other key findings include:

• AMOLEDs Projected to Achieve a Five Year CAGR of 96% -   Samsung SDI, LG Display, Sony and CMEL will deliver almost 17M displays in 2008, which is up over 380% compared to 2007


• By 2012, AMOLED production will pass PMOLEDs

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MED today announces that its revolutionary eyescreen™ display has been designed into wearable mobile media headsets by a leading global manufacturer.

Estar Displaytech Co. Ltd, a leading global manufacturer and supplier of virtual display products, has recently taken delivery of 60,000 units of eyescreen™, the smallest display screen in the world. Based in Hong Kong, Estar manufactures eyewear for mobile TV, video and 3D cinema. Its personal display headsets incorporating eyescreen™ are being shipped by Estar to distributors for retail in the Asia Pacific markets.

eMagin Corporation has issued financial results for its fiscal year and fourth quarter ending December 31, 2007. The results show record revenues with year-over-year results improving by 115% for the full year of 2007.

Financial Summary:

• Revenue for the three and twelve months ending December 31, 2007, of $ 4.6 million and $17.6 million increased 81% and 115%, respectively, from $2.6 million and $8.2 million for the quarter and year ending December 31, 2006. The growth in revenue was directly attributable to increased sales of our microdisplays to military, industrial, and dual-use OEMs, with military OEM growth of 100% driving results.
• Net loss for the three months ending December 31, 2007 was ($1.2 million) compared to ($1.5 million) in 2006. For the full year 2007 net loss was ($18.5 million) compared to a net loss of ($15.3 million) during 2006. Approximately $10.7 million of the loss in 2007 was related to the exchange of the 8% senior secured convertible notes and related warrants for the 6% senior secured convertible notes and warrants.

OLED-T today announced the launch of its low temperature organic electron injector material EI-111-2Me. OLED displays are manufactured from a sandwich of different materials including the electron injector layer. This layer is responsible for injecting electrons from the cathode into the OLED structure, the efficiency of which is critical to the performance of the display.
 
EI-111-2Me is a low temperature replacement for Lithium Floride (LiF), the material typically used by OLED display manufactures as the electron injector layer within an OLED display. Low temperature OLED materials reduce the cost of manufacturing and the potential damage to the underlying layers of the display, thereby improving the lifetime and voltage drift over the lifetime of the OLED device.

EI-111-2 Me enables display manufacturers to improve the efficiency and lifetime of an OLED display, as well as reduce the operating voltage and minimising voltage drift. In customer trials using EI-111 as a direct replacement for LiF, display efficiency improved by 25 per cent and lifetime by 10 per cent.

EI-111-2 Me evaporates at 200oC as opposed to LiF which requires a temperature of over 600oC, making the deposition faster and more controlled and introducing the potential of using plastic as a substrate rather than glass. The reduced manufacturing temperature also eliminates the need for costly evaporation crucibles reducing the overall cost of manufacturing.

As the market for OLED matures display manufacturers are focused on reducing cost throughout the display supply chain. EI-111-2Me provides companies with a significant opportunity to reduce cost at the same time as improving the performance of OLED displays, said says Myrddin Jones, Chief Executive Officer at OLED-T.

OLED-T is sampling of EI-111-2Me with immediate effect and will commence volume production from the fourth quarter of 2008. The new material complements OLED-T’s already strong OLED material portfolio.

QD Vision doesn’t yet have a commercial product, but if its development efforts are successful, it could find itself at the center of a revolution in display technology. Current liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and even cutting-edge organic LED, or OLEDs, are illuminated by electricity-thirsty fluorescent backlights and produce muddy, impure shades of red, green, and blue.

By contrast, QD Vision’s quantum dots—tiny semiconductor crystals only a few nanometers in diameter—produce highly pure colors when stimulated by electrons, and require much less electricity in order to glow brightly.

OLED Technology Report - With over 300 pages of research, data and analysis.

OLED Organic Materials Model - This tool enables you to determine how OLED production financially impacts your organization. Calculate the influence of organic materials on your component costs, materials usage, profit margins, revenues and more.

Read more here

LG Display will start mass-production of Active Matrix (AM) Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) within this year.

CEO Young-soo Kwon of LG Display will report the strategy to CEO Bon-moo Koo of LG Group, which signals that the company plans to make a massive investment for the strategy on the group level.

With a laser light engine, colors don’t look so much as if they’re painted on the screen as if they’re shooting out from it. Colors are alive and vibrant in a way that mimics the brightness of neon light, or a large advertising transparency being illuminated from behind in a light box. The company also says that their laser TVs produce twice as many colors as any traditional TV technology. Indeed, many colors on the plasma and especially on the LCD sets were washed out and dull, while their laser counterparts were vibrant, without looking overblown. The picture looks much like a giant version of the images produced by Sony’s superb but tiny OLED HDTV screens.

While Mitsubishi would not talk sizing, pricing, or specs for its LaserVue sets, a casual observation of one of its models indicated that the production version is likely to be about two-thirds as deep as a same-sized DLP rear projection set. That’s still not as thin as an LCD or the really thin OLED TV tech, but it moves toward diminishing the single biggest objection to rear-projection TV.

Here are a couple of close-up photos of the OLED panels used in OSRAM's Early Future OLED lamp.

OSRAM also released some more technical details. The OLEDs have a surface of 132x33mm and a luminance of 1000 cd/m². The OLEDs are based on small-molecule materials and achieve a lifetime of 2,000 hours and 20 lm/W.