Back in February, Plastic Logic and Novaled (owned by Samsung) announced that throughout 2014 they will demonstrate truly flexible, plastic, full-organic AMOLED displays. The first demo in February was of a monochrome (red) display - and actually it was only shown on a presentation slide. But Plastic Logic promised us that they will show better prototypes as the year progresses.

True to their word, last week, at the Printed Electronics Europe event, plastic logic showed a monochrome 4" 360x128 (95 PPI) flexible AMOLED prototype. This time it was a real demo, as you can see from the photo above. This full-organic AMOLED panel uses Plastic Logic's flexible OTFT backplane and the whole panel can be bent and rolled and still show the image.

Samsung SDI announced that it is buying Samsung's Cheil Industries for $3.3 billion in stock. SDI hopes that the merger will expand the reach of its lithium-ion battery business through the chemical and materials supply chain of Cheil.

Cheil Industries is involved with OLED materials, and in August 2013, Cheil Industries (together with Samsung Electronics) acquired Novaled for €260 million. According to Analysts, this merger will also create synergies in the OLED market for automobiles. Now SDI may use Cheil's OLED business to target materials for OLED lighting and displays in automobiles.

Update: It turns out that Plastic Logic didn't actually demonstrate the flexible OLED prototype. They did show a presentation, in which they revealed that the current first-gen prototype is monochrome (red) and quite simple. They do intend to keep producing new demonstrators throughout 2014.

Novaled (owned by Samsung) and Plastic Logic announced that during 2014 they will demonstrate truly flexible, plastic, full-organic AMOLED displays. The first-gen display was demonstrated at the FlexTech conference in Phoenix last week. Plastic Logic hopes that the technology will be ready for adoption by display makers towards the end of 2014.

The two companies say that this is the first time an all-plastic AMOLED produced in a low-temperature manufacturing process is demonstrated. The display uses Novaled's PIN OLED materials and Plastic Logic's OTFT backplane. The display also used organic materials from Merck (probably the emitters).

Last month Samsung announced that the Novaled acquisition for €260 million (almost $350 million) is complete. Samsung Cheil Industries now owns 50% of Novaled and the company said they will focus entirely on electronic components and materials.

Now Korea's Yonhap News reports that Cheil plans to spend 1.8 trillion Won (almost $1.7 billion) over the next three years in on OLED and display materials and films. The company hopes to reach about 100 billion Won ($93 million) in OLED revenues in 2014. Cheil recently sold its fashion business unit to Samsung Everland for a trillion Won (almost a billion US dollars).

A couple of months ago Samsung announced it is acquiring Novaled for €260 million (almost $350 million). Today the Novaled announced that the deal is closed and the company is officially now owned by Samsung.

So now Novaled is owned by Samsung Cheil Industries (50%), Samsung Electronics (40%) and Samsung Venture Investment (10%). Samsung actually paid €230 million, and the rest of the amount (€30 million) is conditional to reaching certain milestones.

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.

Colnatec and Novaled announced today that the two companies will work together to test the performance Colnatec's Tempre" heated quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor system for device layer self-regeneration in continuously-run OLED production.

Colnatec Tempe sensor system

Colnatec explains that measuring the thickness of an OLED layer (often on the order of nanometers) is a direct function of the temperature of the sensor and substrate being coated. If you do not monitor and equalize the temperature, the thickness accuracy will suffer which can lead to inconsistencies as great as 50% per layer. The Tempe system can extend sensor lifetime and improve cost efficiency in long, continuous runs.

The 2.5-years 11 million Euro R2Flex project recently concluded. The project, which aimed to develop new technologies for efficient and affordable flexible OLEDs manufactured using a roll-to-roll (R2R) process, presented a flexible OLED desk luminaire prototype. It uses two OLED lighting panels, produced at COMEDD and serially connected via flexible contacting.

The flexible OLED panel was produced on a metal foil. Metal was chosen because it is a cost-effective substrate as one of the key goals in the project was lowering the production cost of OLEDs.

Samsung acquired Novaled for €260 million (almost $350 million). The deal is actually rather complicated - Samsung Electronics will acquire 40% of the company, Samsung's Cheil Industries will acquire 50% while the remaining 10% is held by Samsung Venture Investment. The €260 million includes a €30 million contingent payment, which is conditional to reaching certain milestones.

This puts an end to a long saga which began in early 2012 when Novaled filed for an IPO. This didn't go through and then in March 2013 Novaled was almost bought by Korea's Doosan. Later on it was reported that Cheil Industries are interested in the company and today the deal was signed.

Cynora is a German startup established in 2003 that developed copper-based OLED emitter systems. In October 2012 the company unveiled a mostly-solution-based flexible OLED prototype, developed in collaboration with InnovationLab. Last month Germany’s BMBF launched the cyCESH project which aims to develop soluble (printable) materials for low-cost high efficiency OLED lighting devices. Cynora is the leader of the consortium in this €6 million project, together with Novaled and the University of Regensburg.

Cynora's technology is interesting and the company's CEO Dr. Tobias Grab and the company's Business Development manager, Dr. Mathias Mydlak, were kind enough to provide the information for this article explaining the company's technology.