Researchers from the Imperial College London developed a new class of PLED materials that exhibit circularly polarized luminescence. Basically this means that the new materials emit polarized light which could make for more efficient Polymer-OLED devices as none of the light will be blocked by the external anti-glare circular polarizer added to the display.

In 2013 researchers from the ICL has reported they are researching the usage of Helicenes as emitter materials in PLED devices that also emit circularly polarized light - the researchers termed these devices CP-OLED (Circularly-Polarized OLED). Helicenes materials are thermally-stable polycyclic aromatics with helically-shaped molecules.

DSCC says that the OLED circular polarizer market is set to grow from $428 million in 2017 to $1.27 billion in 2022. The market is still dominated by mobile displays.

The OLED circular polarizer market is led by two companies, Sumitomo Chemical and Nitto Denko, with LG Chem increasing its market share in OLED TVs polarizers.

Visionox developed a 7.2" foldable AMOLED display, and has tested its reliability. Visionox says that even after 200,000 folding cycles, the display still showed good reliability. Visionox also performed extensive surface hardness and ball/pen drop tests on this display.

Visionox will discuss the reliability and failure mode analysis of its foldable OLEDs at SID Displayweek 2018 in May - and will also hopefully demonstrate this new display. Visionox performed the tests on a display module that included the AMOLED panel, a touch layer and a thin circular polarizer layer.

US-based Light Polymers launched a new circular polarizer for OLED displays based on its lyotropic liquid crystal technology. The new polarizer is said to be the world's thinner polarizer at only 45 µm.

These lyotropic liquid crystals are water-based, and can be coated using industry standard coating equipment at nearly room temperatures. This enables the company to produce these displays at a lower-cost compared to alternatives, and its production line can currently coat around 30-40 million m² per year, costing a tenth of the capex and lower energy costs than competing processes (this is according to Light Polymers, of course).

According to ETNews, Samsung aims to expand the adoption of its Y-OCTA touch technology which will be used in both versions of its Galaxy S9 (5.77" and 7.22"). In the Galaxy S8, only the 5.77" version uses Y-OCTA, the larger variant uses Samsung's film-type touch.

Y-OCTA (which apparently stands for Youm On-Cell Touch AMOLED) describes Samsung's On-Cell flexible (hence Youm) AMOLED touch technology. The touch sensor in Y-OCTA displays is deposited directly on the encapsulation (TFE) layer which is better than the add-on (or film-type) touch used in older flexible AMOLEDs generations. The optical features are better as the touch layer is below a polarizer and enables the use of a non-ITO grid, there's no need for a support film (see image above) and the number of layers is lower. Samsung estimates that Y-OCTA also cuts production costs by around 30%.

Last month BOE demonstrated several exciting new display technologies at the SID DisplayWeek, and now we have this very nice (and long) video that shows most of BOE's new displays.

We start with a tablet-phone device, a 7.56" foldable touch-enabled OLED that features an QXGA (2048x1536) resolution, a bending radius of 5 mm and a contrast rate of over 70,000:1.

According to the Korea Herald, Samsung Electronics demonstrated several new display technologies in a private room during the Mobile World Congress last month. All of these technologies are expected to enter production within the next year or two, according to the source quoted by the report.

1,200 PPI AMOLED for VR

The report claims that Samsung demonstrated a high-resolution AMOLED panel for VR applications. The AMOLED on display featured a 1,200 PPI - much higher than Samsung's current highest density displays which are 577 PPI. Samsung's aim is to reach 1,500 PPI which will greatly enhance the VR experience.

In November 2016 Sunic Systems announced that it developed an plane-source evaporation-FMM based AMOLED production process that can reach very high densities. The 100um mask announced in November can achieve a PPI of 1,500. This may be the system that Samsung is now testing. Sunic says that eventually this technology will enable even 2,250 PPI.

US-based Light Polymers announced a $24.3 million Series A funding round, to advance its OLED display technology and scale up production.

Light Polymers is developing products based on lyotropic liquid crystals for several applications - including OLED displays. Using the new funds, Light Polymers aims to expand its OLED R&D and scale up the chemistry and film production of its 35 micron-thin OLED circular polarizer. Light Polymers also aims to develop a 10-micron OLED polarziers.

A couple of weeks ago, at IDW 2016, AU Optronics introduced a new bi-directional foldable AMOLED display. This display can be bent both inwards and upwards, unlike previous foldable AMOLED prototypes which can only be bent in one direction.

AUO says that the AMOLED structure limits the flexibility, and to overcome this the company replaced the circular polarizer usually used with a thin (10um) color filter array (apparently this is an WRGB display). AUO also used specially-located TFT and TFE (encapsulation) layers that endure many folding cycles - AUO says that the display can be bent more than 1.2 million times in 4mm curvature radius. The entire display thickness is 100 um.

Update: according to some people, Sony's (and Panasonic's) new OLED prototypes actually use white OLEDs with color filters (WOLED-CF) and not RGB sub pixels with color filters. Hopefully I'll get more information on this soon...

During CES 2013, both Sony and Panasonic unveiled 56" 4K OLED TV panel prototypes. Both panels use Sony's Super Top Emission structure. Those panels used color filters, which caused some confusion, so I thought I'd explain Sony's technology.

Super Top Emission utilizes RGB OLED subpixels, a microcavity structure and color filters. Sony says that this simultaneously enhances color purity, attains higher contrast and achieves lower power consumption.