OLED is an emerging display and lighting technology that enables beautiful and efficient displays and lighting panels. Thin OLEDs are already being used in many mobile devices and TVs. Polymer-OLEDs (or PLEDs, also used to be called P-OLEDs) are OLED devices made from polymer (large-molecules) materials.

CDT 14-inch OLED prototype from 2005
14-inch PLED prototype (CDT)

PLEDs vs SM-OLEDs

Basically you can make OLEDs from two kinds of materials: small-molecule (SM-OLED) or large-molecules, or polymers. Virtually all OLED displays on the market toady are using Small Molecules, and are produced using evaporation processes.

PLED (P-OLED) materials do not perform as good as SM-OLEDs in terms of lifetime and efficiency, but are easily soluble and so can be easily adapted for printing and other solution-based processes. In the past some believed that the soluble nature of PLEDs mean that these materials will be the future of OLED displays, but that has not been the case yet. There has been great progress in evaporation processes and materials - and also in soluble SM-OLEDs.

CDT / Sumitomo

UK-based Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) is the company that holds the basic patents for PLED technologies. The company licensed its technology to several companies, including Philips, Seiko Epson, Osram, Dupont and Delta Optoelectronics, but it does not seem as it anyone is pursuing PLEDs at the moment besides Sumitomo Chemicals (which owns CDT).

Sumitomo and CDT are still developing PLED materials and panels. Sumitomo is providing emitter materials for JOLED (who started low volume production of printed OLED monitor panels in December 2017, see below) and is hopefully gearing up to start mass production of its own OLED lighting panels.

JOLED's PLED

JOLED (Japan OLED) was established in August 2014 by Japan Display, Sony and Panasonic with an aim to become an OLED medium display (10-30 inch) producer, mostly targeting monitors and commercial applications. JOLED is using a printing process which should result in lower cost production (but of lower performance displays) compared to evaporation printing.

LG UltraFine OLED Pro photo

JOLED is using PLED materials produced by Sumitomo (see above). The company started commercial low-volume production of its 21.6" 4K OLED panels towards the end of 2017 at the company's pilot 4.5-Gen line. In 2021 JOLED started mass producing PLED displays at its 5.5-Gen line in Nomi City.

Panasonic's 2013 56" OLED TV prototypes

In January 2013 Panasonic unveiled a 56" 4K (3840x2160) OLED TV panel prototype that was produced using an all-printing method and PLED materials. Panasonic says that all the organic materials were deposited using ink-jet printing. The panel's TFT substrate was supplied by Sony (and actually made by AUO. It's an Oxide-TFT panel) as part of the two companies collaboration. The lifetime and efficiency of this TV was not disclosed.

In December 2013 Sony and Panasonic announced that they are canceling the OLED TV JV. Panasonic is now producing OLED TVs - but these use WRGB OLED panels produced by LG Display.

P-OLED (PLED) vs pOLED

P-OLEDs, or PLEDs, are a class of OLED materials. Somewhat confusingly, LG Display is branding its mobile flexible AMOLED displays as pOLEDs (plastic OLEDs). For more information on LGD's pOLEDs, click here.

Further reading

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The latest PLED news:

UDC signs an OLED lighting material technology license agreement with Sumitomo

Universal Display and Sumitomo Chemical signed an OLED Technology License Agreement. UDC granted Sumitomo license rights to manufacture and sell solution-processed OLED lighting products. The agreement runs for the life of Universal Display’s relevant intellectual property rights.

Sumitomo aims to use UDC's technologies to increase the efficacy of their PLED lighting panels. The company will "explore business opportunities in lighting applications that take their printed polymer OLED technology to the next generation lighting.

Read the full story Posted: Jan 22,2015

Kateeva and Sumitomo to pair PLED materials to Kateeva's ink-jet system

Kateeva and Sumiomo Chemical announced a non-exclusive key partnership to pair Sumitomo's PLED materials to Kateeva's YieldJet OLED ink-jet printing platform. The two companies hope this collaboration will lead to adoption of P-OLED inkjet printing by OLED TV makers.

Kateeva and Sumitomo will cooperate to co-develop high-quality reference data for customers, which will be optmized to Kateeva's platform and Sumitomo's inks.

Read the full story Posted: Jan 15,2015

OLEDNet: JOLED to use Sony's OLED technology and Panasonic's production fab

Last month Japan Display, Sony and Panasonic announced the formation of a new OLED company. JOLED, funded by the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, will be established formally in January 2015, and will focus mainly on medium sized OLEDs for tablet applications.

JDI 5.2-inch FHD OLED prototypeJDI 5.2-inch FHD OLED prototype

One of the key questions surrounding JOLED is the technology choice. While Sony (and JDI, which is basing its OLED program on Sony's tech) is using small-molecule OLEDs and an evaporation process, Panasonic based its OLED development on Sumitomo's PLED materials and printing technologies.

Read the full story Posted: Aug 17,2014

Panasonic to withdraw from the OLED TV market and sell its OLED business to JDI?

A report from Japan suggests that Panasonic decided to withdraw from the OLED TV business as production costs are too high for the Japanese company. According to the report, Panasonic hopes to sale its OLED business to Japan Display (an agreement is expected next month).

This report is not confirmed yet. It is rather surprising as Panasonic's OLED business is focused on TV panels, while Japan Display is producing small/medium displays. In the past few years, Panasonic focused on printing technologies using Sumitomo's PLED materials.

Read the full story Posted: May 25,2014

LunaLEC's new spray technology creates 3D LEC objects in air

In 2012 we posted about light-emitting electrochemical cells (LEC), a cheaper (but less efficient) flexible alternative to OLED lighting. Back then, three Universities (in Sweden and Denmark), involved with Polymer LEC (P-LEC) research, launched a company called LunaLEC to develop and commercialize the technology.

Now LunaLEC unveiled a new technology that can be used to fabricate 3D LECs in air using spray-spintering. This fault-tolerant fabrication technique can produce multi colored large-area emission patterns via sequential deposition of different inks based on identical solvents. The technique can also be used to deposit LECs on complex-shaped surfaces - for example the fork you see above. This is done in-air without the use of cleanrooms.

Read the full story Posted: May 20,2014

Sony and panasonic cancel their OLED joint-development project

In June 2012, Sony and Panasonic announced that two companies will jointly develop technologies for OLED TV panels mass production. Now the two Japanese companies announced that they canceled the joint development. The two companies will continue to develop OLED technologies independently, but will focus on UHD LCDs. Sony and Panasonic explains tha OLED TVs did "not deliver the growth originally envisioned, and are unlikely to be commercially viable in the near future.

Sony 56-inch 4K OLED TV prototypeSony 56-inch 4K OLED TV prototype

In January 2013 (during last year's CES event), the two companies unveiled 56" 4K OLED TV prototypes. The Oxide-TFT substrate was produced by AUO. We know that Panasonic used an ink-jet printing process, Sumitomo's PLED materials and a direct-emission architecture. Sony used their own Super Top Emission OLED technology and evaporable OLED materials.

Read the full story Posted: Dec 26,2013

Kateeva finally unveil their YIELDjet OLED TV inkjet printing system

Kateeva is a US based startup that was established in 2009 to develop OLED ink-jet deposition technology originally developed at MIT. The company has been been in stealth-mode for years, and now finally they have unveiled their technology and system, branded YIELDJet.

So YIELDJET is an inkjet printing system that can be used to produce OLEDs in high volume. Kateeva claims that their system, the first one engineered from the ground up for OLED mass production, will dramatically improve yields and drive production costs lower. Kateeva says that this was achieved by three major technical breakthroughs: is features a production-worthy pure nitrogen process chamber, which doubles the lifetime in certain applications, it reduces particles by as much as 10X thanks to a specialized mechanical design and it offers exceptional film coating uniformity with a process window that’s 5X wider than standard technologies.

Read the full story Posted: Nov 20,2013

Novaled, CDT and others to co-develop low-cost high-performance soluble OLED lighting technologies

The EU launched a new project (called ENAB-SPOLED) that aims to use solution-based OLED materials to enable high performing cost competitive OLEDs for the lighting market and to develop a functional luminaire demonstrator. More specifically, the project partners will develop new materials (transport materials, emitters), new optical technologies for light guiding, and also process technologies for solution processing of small molecule and PLEDs.

This 2-year project has a budget of €4 million and is supported by Germany, Austria and the UK. The project partners are Novaled, Cambridge Display Technology, Tridonic, Zumbotel, the University of Durham and the Fraunhofer IAP. More information can be found here.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 06,2013

New oligomer OLED molecule emits non-polarized light, to enable more efficient PLEDs

Researchers from the University of Utah, Bonn and Regensburg developed a new wagon-wheel (or rotelle-pasta) shaped OLED molecule that emits non-polarized (random) light.Those oligomers, or wrapped-up polymers may enable OLEDs more efficient than polymer based OLEDs (PLEDs).

The researchers explain that current poylmer OLED molecules (which are shaped like spaghetti pasta, to continue the same metaphore) emit polarized light. Some of that light get trapped inside the OLED device and this makes it less efficient. They say that up to 80% of the generated light may be trapped in the OLED because it is polarized.

Read the full story Posted: Sep 30,2013