Universal Display Corporation has been awarded a $334,000 extension to a US army Small-Business-Innovation-Research (SBIR) phase III contract. UDC will continue to work on their flexible OLED display technology, and will deliver new prototype flexible displays built on metal foil (using amorphhous-silicon backplanes). The new displays will also be encased in new and thinner housing (the old ones were pretty bulky, as can be seen in the photo below).

UDC is working on this together with LG Display and L-3 display systems. They will focus on the design and performance of the OLED displays. The technology is being evaluation by the US Department of Defense for military applications such as a wrist-mounted display for soldiers.

Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) will develop a new technology to make OLED backplanes, together with Semprius. The new tech will be integrated into CDT's 14-inch development line at Godmanchester campus, near Cambridge, UK.

Semprius has a technology for semiconductor printing, and the two companies will use the technology in the manufacturing of OLED backplanes.

Vitex has produced a nice video of several OLED products that use their thin film encapsulation technology. Among those products you can see the Samsung's flapping display, foldable phone and curved displays. Several UDC OLED prototypes are in there as well, including their flexible displays, developed together by LGDisplay.

Vitex told us that their tech is used on AMOLED and PMOLED displays, on glass, silicon or metal foil. Some of those products use direct encapsulation, and some use barrier substrate. A few of the photos seen show products that use flexible CIGS PV cells laminated with Vitex's barrier.

UDC is saying they have produced an ultra-thin flexible OLED display. The entire thing is less than 50 micrometer thick.

R.Ma from UDC says "We have chosen thin metal foils as the substrates for flexible displays because of their excellent thermal, mechanical and permeation barrier properties and good flexibility. Metal foils as thin as 25 mm have been used and planarization process has been developed. Another key challenge is to develop a flexible thin film permeation barrier. OLEDs degrade as a result of exposure to atmospheric oxygen and water. Working with Professor Wagner’s team at Princeton University, we have identified a flexible, highly impermeable barrier layer that is deposited from environmentally-friendly and inexpensive precursors in a single-chamber reactor. The lifetime of OLEDs encapsulated with the layers exceeds the industrial target of 1,000 hours and also the lifetime of conventionally sealed glass packaged OLEDs. Many materials are used in a flexible AMOLED: organic, inorganic and metallic systems."

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.

Arcelor Mittal, the world's largest quality steel maker, and Novaled, OLED technology and material provider, have joined forces for a new OLED project. The partners are developing top-emitting OLEDs on flexible substrates for signage and lighting purposes since 2006.

By using Arcelor Mittal's steel plates as substrates, remarkable properties for bendable OLED applications can be achieved. Metallic substrates offer several advantages. Compared to standard glass-sheets they are more robust and durable and commonly produced by roll-to-roll process. This production method can be adapted to a subsequent inline process for OLED-deposition enabling high through-put manufacturing with low tact time. In this collaboration Novaled contributes both its broad technical experience with respect to highly efficient and stable OLED device architectures as well as its material know-how for doped transport layers.

Universal Display Corporation today announced that it has been awarded a $935,000 contract extension by the U.S. Army Communication Electronics Research and Development Engineering Center (CERDEC). The extension builds on an existing Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase III grant with CERDEC for the development of flexible, active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) display technology for demonstration in a prototype wrist-based communications device.

Development efforts under the contract extension will focus on combining Universal Display's PHOLED(TM) phosphorescent OLED technology with LG.Philips LCD (LPL) amorphous-Silicon (a-Si) TFT technology. Bringing LPL, a leading manufacturer of thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays (TFT-LCDs), to the program as a development partner marks an important step toward the commercialization of flexible OLED display products. In May, the two companies showcased the world's first high-resolution AMOLED display built on flexible metal foil at the 2007 Society for Information Display Conference and Symposium. Building on this initial demonstration, Universal Display and LPL plan to work on a prototype with key design and performance enhancements under this program.

L-3 Communications Display Systems (L-3 Display Systems), a leading supplier of ruggedized display systems for military uses and a long-standing partner under this program, is responsible for designing and integrating its advanced communications components with the QVGA, full-color, flexible AMOLED display into the prototype wrist-mounted communications device for delivery to CERDEC.

Universal Display was awarded Phase III of the SBIR grant by CERDEC in January 2006. The Company's work with the U.S. Department of Defense also includes flexible AMOLED display development for the U.S. Army Research Laboratories (ARL), the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force Research Laboratories.

Vitex Systems today announced its proprietary moisture and oxygen barrier solution demonstrated impressive reliability results when used for high-temperature applications. The company's revolutionary Barix(TM) thin-film barrier was continuously tested at 100 degrees C, 120 degrees C and as high as 140 degrees C for more than 500 hours without losing its barrier integrity. Moreover, results indicated that the barrier can maintain its integrity for more than 1,000 hours in this severe environment.

Vitex's Barix thin-film barrier uses an organic and inorganic multi-layer structure. To demonstrate product compatibility, it was used to create the world's first high-resolution AMOLED, which leverages an amorphous silicon backplane on a flexible metal foil. This flexible display -- jointly developed by Universal Display Corp. and LG. Philips LCD -- was showcased at last month's Society for Information Display (SID) conference in Long Beach, Calif. Similar encapsulation was shown by Samsung SDI on the world's first, and thinnest, full-color top emission AMOLED on a metal foil during last year's show.

LG.Philips LCD has announced that it has developed (in cooperation with UDC.) the first full-color flexible AMOLED display that uses amorphous silicon (a-Si) technology.

The 4-inch full-color flexible AM OLED display features 320×240 QVGA resolution and can reproduce 16.77 million colors. It uses a stainless metal foil substrate to ensure durability and protection against heat, which improves the manufacturing process and enhances product stability, noted LG.Philips LCD.

Using a-Si backplane technology allows LG.Philips LCD to use its existing TFT LCD production line for these AM OLEDs, a major step toward demonstrating the commercial viability of such products. LG.Philips LCD will unveil the full-color flexible AM OLED display at SID 2007 in the US on May 20.

Read more here (Digitimes)

Universal Display Corporation announced that it has been awarded a $730,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract by the U.S. Army Research Laboratories (ARL) to continue its development of innovative encapsulation technology for flexible OLEDs.

In this program, entitled Flexible and Conformal Environmental Barrier Technology for Displays, Universal Display will be using a new approach to encapsulate a long-lived, active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) display prototype built on flexible metal foil. During the prior Phase I program, Universal Display and Princeton University demonstrated the feasibility of this multilayer encapsulation process based on plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (or PECVD). This technology, pioneered at Princeton University, is designed to enable the deposition of protective, barrier films onto an OLED’s top surface, a critical element on the development roadmap for flexible OLED displays.