AI / Machine Learning

Merck KGaA is a pioneer in high performance OLED material development, supplying a range of materials for AMOLED makers since the industry’s inception.

To learn more about Merck’s materials and views on the OLED industry, we conducted an interview with Dr. Georg Bernatz, Merck Electronics’ Global Head of OLED Technical Marketing. Georg Bernatz has received a PhD in Physics from the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany in 2000. In 2004, Georg joined Merck, where, over the years, he worked in various functions and on various topics in the field of Liquid Crystals for displays. In 2018, Georg changed to OLED, leading OLED Physics Product Research, and in 2020 he became responsible for all Physics & Application Labs in Darmstadt for Display materials. Since October 2023, Georg is heading Merck’s Global Technical Marketing for OLED materials.

Hello Dr. Bernatz. Can you bring us up to date quickly on Merck's current OLED material products? What do you offer to OLED display makers?

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is very active in the design, development and production of a broad variety of high performing OLED materials, with a strong focus on hole and electron transport materials (HTM, ETM), host materials for phosphorescent emitters as well as activities in the field of high efficiency blue.

Researchers from Japan's Keio University, in collaboration with Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, developed a new method to accelerate the design of OLED materials, using a combination of classical computing with quantum computing.

The new approach combines a 'classic' machine learning model with a quantum-classical computational molecular design. Demonstrating the new approach, the researchers discovered a highly efficient OLED emitter, a deuterated derivative of Alq₃. The new emitter is not only highly efficient, it is also easy to synthesize. 

In recent years, we have seen accelerated OLED materials development, aided by software tools based on machine learning and Artificial Intelligence. This is an excellent development which contributes to the continued improvement in OLED efficiency, brightness and lifetime.

Kyulux's Kyumatic AI material discover system

The promise of these new technologies is the ability to screen millions of possible molecules and systems quickly and efficiently. Materials scientists can then take the most promising candidates and perform real synthesis and experiments to confirm the operation in actual OLED devices.

In 2020, US-based Kebotix was awarded with a US DoE grant to develop AI-based molecular screening technology to identify novel blue OLED emitters. The company now announced that it has managed to discover several new classes of candidate materials, and develop device prototypes.

Kebotix says it aims to start testing these molecules with device makers in early- to mid-2022.

SID Displayweek, the industry's premier display event will soon take place - again in a virtual format. Harit Doshi, SID's Exhibition Chair, was kind enough to talk to us and tell us more about the upcoming event:

Hello Harit! I'm sure you're excited towards this year's DisplayWeek!

I remember the energy in the display world, and particularly at Display Week, 20+ years ago when I entered the display industry. This was when CRTs were being replaced by LCDs and there were a lot of expectations from new display developments like flat-panel LCDs, electrophoretic displays, flexible and conformable LCDs, OLEDs, and LEDs.

Last week we reported about a new large-scale computer-driven material screening process that was developed by Researchers from Harvard University, MIT and Samsung.

The so-called Molecular Space Shuttle system combines theoretical and experimental chemistry, machine learning and cheminformatics, with an aim to quickly identify new OLED molecules (the system was already used to deisgn more than a 1,000 new high-performance blue-light emitting molecules). Today Kyulux announced that it secured a license to Harvard University’s Molecular Space Shuttle deep learning system.

Researchers from Harvard University, MIT and Samsung developed a large-scale computer-driven material screening process that incorporates theoretical and experimental chemistry, machine learning and cheminformatics, with an aim to quickly identify new OLED molecules.

The so-called Molecular Space Shuttle system was used to design more than 1,000 new high-performance blue-light emitting molecules. It seems that there is still a lot of work ahead to find the best new candidates and actually test these molecules, but this may be a promising new direction in OLED molecule research.