MicroOLED was founded in 2007 - to develop and produce OLED microdisplays. The company had plans to release their first product towards the end of 2009, but these plans were scrapped. Last month the company announced that they are about the ship their first-gen product in 2 months, and already received orders for over 10,000 microdisplays. MicroOLED's first-gen display is a 9.6mm 800x480 (WVGA) OLED microdisplay that uses white SM-OLEDs and RGBB color filters. Power consumption is 25mW for 60Hz video at 150cd/m².

Eric Marcellin-Dibon, MicroOLED's co-founder, CEO and head of strategy and biz-dev was kind enough to answer a few questions we had. Eric has more than 20 years experience in the field of high technologies and consumer electronics. Previously director of the display strategy and general manager of the strategic sourcing group at Thomson, Eric held several management positions in France, Germany and in the UK.

Back in 2006, we published an interview with Andy Hannah, Plextronics' president, CEO and co-founder. Andy agreed to do a follow-up interview to update us on Plextronics' business and technology.

Plextronics is a US-based company (established in 2002, as a spin-out from Carnegie Mellon University) that is developing technology that enables broad market commercialization of organic electronic devices - including OLEDs, plastic chips, polymer solar cells and organic sensors.

Q: Andy, can you give us a short introduction to your OLED technology?

Q: The benefits of OLEDs include, of course, being printable, low cost and demonstrating enhanced device performance. Plextronics’ technology plays a key part in achieving these benefits by reducing operating voltage in devices and thereby increasing lifetime and power efficiency.

Philips has transformed the Business Center OLED Lighting into a Global Business Unit OLED. They tell us that this emphasizes the importance of OLEDs within Philips. Kristin Knappstein, Head of Business Creation in the OLED unit has kindly agreed to answer a few questions we had.

Q: Hi Kristin, and thanks for your time. You have launched the first Lumiblade panels back in 2009. How's the response so far?

The first Lumiblade panels were already available in 2008 through our Technology kit, which was very well sought after.

Since then we have had constant request for panels in all shapes and sizes. Today, people not only can order from from our webshop a wide array of standard panels which are delivered in our Lumiblade Experience Kit but also our Lumiblade modules and moreover Lumiblades of individual shapes and sizes by contacting us.

Reactions have been very positive and inspiring to us. General statements by our customers are that it is good to have a brand new technology accessible the way we as Philips give access to it. As for a customer driven company it is our strategy to have this feedback in order to align our products with the customer needs.

We had the good chance to talk with Gerd Guenther, Novaled's Chief Marketing Officer. He was kind enough to answer a few of our questions, and give us some information and updates from Novaled.

Gerd, thanks for your time. Can you explain Novaled's business model to us?

When Novaled started as a spin-off from Fraunhofer and Technical University of Dresden in 2001 with just 3 people, the idea was to market its doping technology Novaled PIN OLED^®) along with its proprietary materials. Today, quite an impressive number of well known display and lighting makers are customers of Novaled. That means we offer IP, licensing and technology transfer packages but also R&D contracting as well as trainings.

Novaled 15x15 cm white OLED

Back in February, Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical has announced an OLED Lighting JV. Pioneer will produce OLED lighting panels, Mitsubishi Chemical will supply chemicals and will market and sell the panels through their Verbatim daughter company.

We had the good chance to speak with Verbatim regarding this new OLED business.

Q: Are there any updates on the OLED JV?
Mitsubishi Chemical Corp will start to supply samples at the end of 2010, and mass production in the middle of 2011.

A few days ago, Blackbody announced a new OLED lamp (the light photon) It was the first time I heard of Blackbody. Today Blackbody has unveiled a large OLED chandelier that uses 282 OLED panels. Their CTO, Bruno Dussert-Vidalet, was happy to answer a few questions:

Q: Can you give me some background-info on Blackbody? Is it part of Astron-FIAMM? Do you have other investors?

Blackbody is the commercial brand of Astron FIAMM for the general lighting industry.

Light Photon OLED lamp

Q: Do you have any OLED Business partners?

No we are doing all the OLED alone, we use commercial and R&D available materials.

In February 2009, we interviewed Dr. Udo Heider, Merck's OLED Unit VP. Merck is a global pharmaceutical and chemical company based in Germany, working on high performance OLED materials. Dr. Heider was kind enough to do a follow-up interview with us...

Q: Dr. Heider, thanks for taking the time to do this second interview... Back in February you said that within nine months you'll have a solution-processable Green OLED ready. Any updates on that? What about Blue and Red?

Indeed it is with great pleasure for me to report that our development team has really done an excellent job in making progress and delivering results in the area of solution-processed OLED materials. Merck can now report that in a spin coating process, the gap between solution and evaporation processed phosphorescent green materials has been almost completely bridged. Merck is now shifting its focus to the implementation phase: this means working together with world renowned process and display manufacturers to make sure that these materials can now be printed in line with performance and yield requirements. We hope to report on results in this area in the near future. The extensive know-how that has been accumulated during the last couple of months in the areas of Green can now be transferred with confidence to the other primary colors Red and Blue. The key to success is based on combining the learnings and strengths of the Small molecule and Polymer OLED worlds.

CDT is one of the leaders in OLED research, focusing on Polymer-based OLEDs (PLEDs, also called P-OLEDs). While these OLEDs are lagging behind small-molecule OLEDs in current products (all AMOLEDs today are based on SM-OLEDs), some companies believe that PLEDs are actually the better tech for the future.

CDT's CEO, David Fyfe has agreed to answer a few questions we had on CDT's technology. David joined CDT in 2000 as Chairman and CEO. David saw CDT go public in 2004, and then negotiated the sale of CDT to Sumitomo for $285 million (in September 2007). David is also a director of Soligie, an electronics printing company, Acal Energy, a fuel cell technology developer and the Plastic Electronics Foundation.

Q: David - thanks for agreeing to do this interview. Since the Sumitomo acquisition, CDT has been rather quiet... can you give us an update on where's the company now, and where's it is headed?
Since the merger of CDT into Sumitomo Chemical in September 2007, CDT has grown substantially and received considerable capital investment to enable it to remain a leading developer of PLED technology. It works very closely with SCC laboratories in Japan and most recently has been transferring manufacturing process knowhow to SCC's own PLED manufacturing development line, recently commissioned at Ehime on Shikoku, Japan. CDT in partnership with SCC has made large strides in materials lifetimes and efficiencies. SCC prefers to take a lower profile in announcing these advances since its business model is to work with selected display maker partners in a collaborative, confidential relationship. We have also made big strides in the development of top emitting structures and in printing PLED displays. SCC's strategy is that CDT will continue to be its leading development center for PLED technology with Ehime scaling process technology to a yielding process status. CDT is also working very closely with Semprius of North Carolina, USA to develop single crystal silicon TFT structures on which PLED devices can be deposited and driven using Semprius’ proprietary stamping technology.

CDT 14-inch OLED prototype from 2005

Q: It seems that OLED displays are finally entering the mainstream - we hear of new devices (mainly by Samsung, but also from Sony, Microsoft, LG and others) almost daily. What are your thoughts on this? what are the challenges that still exist for OLEDs?
Sony broke the logjam of resistance to the adoption of OLED in large displays by major display makers with the introduction of its XEL-1 11 OLED TV in 2007. Samsung SDI’s investment in small screen OLED production in 2007, based on LTPS backplanes was another major impetus. Since then, Chi Mei has brought on small OLED screen capacity, TMD (now wholly owned by Toshiba) has built an OLED line to manufacture small screens, LG Display will start up their Gen 3.5 line late this year and if press reports are to be believed, Toppoly will commission their capacity with Nokia as a lead customer and Panasonic have a major OLED development program for large OLED displays.

Quantum Dots are getting a lot of attention lately, especially as a new SSL lighting technology. One of the companies that is working on this new tech is QD Vision. Their co-founder and CTO, Seth Coe-Sullivan has agreed to explain the technology, introduce the company, and answer a few questions.

Seth received his Ph.D in electrical engineering from MIT in 2005, writing a thesis on incorporating quantum dots in hybrid organic/inorganic LED structure. That's the technology basis of QD Vision. Seth was chosen as one of the top young entrepreneurs under the age of 30 by BusinessWeek.

QD Vision is a quantum-dot product company that delivers highly differentiated lighting solutions to major industries where color, power and design matter - these include lighting, displays, signage and defense. QD Vision’s Quantum Light™ platform enables step-change advances over other display and lighting solutions such as LCDs, plasma displays, LEDs and even organic LEDs (OLEDs). QD Vision is privately held, based in MA, US, and has several first-tier patents originating at MIT.

Q: Hello Seth, and thanks for agreeing to do this interview. Can you explain your technology? What exactly *are* quantum dots?
Quantum dots are tiny bits of semiconductor crystals with amazing optical properties that are determined not only by their material composition, but their size. QD Vision synthesizes these materials in solution, and formulates them into inks and films that we sell to our customers, enabling step-change performance and cost benefits. Our first products are Quantum Light^TM optics for solid state lighting devices, and our customers offer the most efficient, highest color quality LED lighting solutions on the market today.

Last month Seiko Epson has unveiled a new inkjet-printing technology for OLEDs, suitable for large sized panels. We have talked to Satoru Miyashita, General Manager of Seiko Epson's Core Technology Development Center about this new technology and their plans for OLED production.

Q: You have shown a new ink-jet based OLED technology. You say it will enable 37" or larger HD-OLED TVs. Do you have any plans to actually make such TVs? When do you think products can be made with this new tech?
Epson is currently considering a variety of options regarding the commercialization of this technology, but at this point no specific announcements have been made about plans. We see 2012 as being the year that 37"+ OLED TVs will be launched by various makers, and 2015 as the year that sales will really take off for this market.

Espon 14-inch Inkjet processed OLED