German startup Cynora unveiled a new mostly-solution-based flexible OLED prototype - aimed for smart packaging applications. Cynora developed the low-cost emitters (based on copper precursors) and developed the prototype in collaboration with InnovationLab (in a project titled cyFlex).

Cynora are now working towards the integration of the wiring into the thin film layers of the OLED. Cynora are using solution processing (coating and printing).

Researchers from the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) developed a new method to selectively measure the behavior of specific molecules at the interfaces of organic layers in a multilayered OLED device - while the device is emitting light, and without harming the device. This can be used to study the deterioration of materials and interface in the OLED and enable improving the device's lifetime easier.

The researchers used advanced laser spectroscopic technique to measure the molecular vibrational spectrum at each layer interface. More specifically, they have used sum frequency generation (SFG) spectroscopy. AIST developed a two-color SFG spectroscopy that uses wavelength-tunable lasers.

Update: Philips have just lowered the price for the interactive mirror to €2,490. Nice price drop, but it's still extremely expensive...

Philips just announced that the LivingShapes interactive OLED mirror is now shipping - for €2,990 (just over $4,000 - and quite a bit more expensive that the €1,500 they said when they launched it in June). The mirror uses 64 (8x8) square OLED panels and infrared sensors that detects the outline of the person looking at the mirror and switches off the OLEDs that are in the field of vision - thus turning it into a mirror. It's clever and beautiful and quite cool in my opinion...

The OLED panels are 42x44.2 mm in size, have a color temperature of 3,000K and have a typical luminance of 1,500 cd/m². The total lumen output when all OLEDs are on is 400 lm.

Rohm has unveiled a new planar LED (not OLED) lighting panel. The panel is made by using LED packages on a plane surface and a light diffusion plate which makes it seem like a planar device - like an OLED lighting panel. It has a very high CRI (98) - achieved by using a white resin layer on the package which prevents the sulfuration of the lead frame.

Rohm says that the panel is superior to OLED panels - in terms of cost and efficiency (the life time is also very good at 50,000 hours). Of course OLED lighting is still a new technology which improves rapidly - and will offer features that will be hard to achieve using LEDs (transparency, flexibility, low-cost printing processes, etc). Rohm haven't yet decided when to commercialize this panel, but they say that the technologies needed are "almost completed". Israeli's Oree is already producing similar LED panels.

Nikon's S800c Android (V2.3) powered camera is now shipping for $347. The S800c is the world's first Android-powered (v2.3) digital camera. The slim camera sports a 10x optical zoom lens, 16mp sensor, 4GB of internal memory, inbuilt GPS and a 3.5" WVGA AMOLED touch screen.

Futaba unveiled a new 3.5" (256x64) full-color flexible PMOLED prototype. The new prototype is thin (0.22 mm thick - thinner than Futaba's current 0.29 mm thin panels) and features 100 cd/m² brightness.

This seems to be quite similar to the old flexible OLED panel shown at CEATEC 2010 by TDK Micro (now owned by Futaba), but it's quite a bit thinner (back in 2010 the panel was 3 mm thick). The old panel was made on a resin substrate and used a white emitter with color filters. We do not know the technology used in the new panel.

Update: Nanomarkets released the executive summary of this report, well worth a read...

NanoMarkets released a new report on OLED encapsulation (Markets for OLED Encapsulation Materials 2012-2019) - in which they forecast that the sales of OLED encapsulation materials for OLED TVs and lighting will grow from virtually zero in 2012 to $625 million in 2019 ($150 for OLED TVs and $475 for OLED lighting).

Rigid cover glass sales will grow from $20 million in 2012 to $432 million in 2019. Flexible glass encapsulation will reach $270 million. Nontraditional encapsulation materials (such as ALD conformal coating, multilayer barriers, etc.) will remain quite small for some time.

Someone leaked an internal RIM slide showing an upcoming BlackBerry 10 Aristo phone, with some very interesting spec - a quad-core 1.5 GHz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of flash storage, microSD and mini HDMI. The display is a 4.65" OLED, 1280x720. The slide says the display will feature OCTA glass (On-Cell Touch AMOLED, according to RapidBerry.net) - so this is probably a Super AMOLED display (not really surprising).

Back in June it was leaked that the upcoming BlackBerry N-Series (with the QWERTY keyboard) will feature a square 720x720 2.8" (330 ppi) AMOLED display. This hasn't been officially confirmed yet either. Anyway we can only hope that RIM will indeed release their first AMOLED phone soon...