UK OLED industry

The UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council  (EPSRC) has awarded 2.9 million GBP (around $3.9 million USD) to a research group at the University of St Andrews led by Prof. Eli Zysman-Colman, to develop solution-processable stable and efficient blue OLED emitters, based on Prof. Zysman-Colman TADF OLED emitters research.

The research group will establish a 5-year open fellowship, that will form a team of 6 researchers. The final objective is to develop an automated film formation and characterization platform. While the grant is academic, this technology may end up being commercialized by SolOLED. 

UK-based OTFT display backplane developer Smartkem announced a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) with PMOLED maker RiTdisplay to evaluate the integration of Smartkem's OTFT process on RiTdisplay's 2.5-Gen pilot line for AMOLED production.

Smartkems announced a joint development agreement with RiTdisplay back in 2021, and in 2024 it signed a collaboration agreement with RiTDisplay for the production of OTFT-based AMOLED displays. This new MoU marks, according to Smartkem, a "significant progression in the collaboration work" between the two companies. Under the MoU, product prototyping capabilities will be transferred from ITRI's Gen2.5 line to a newly integrated Gen2.5 pilot line at RiTdisplay. The parties expect that the RiTdisplay line will be available for use in the second half of 2025.

Researchers from the University of Manchester and the University of Cambridge, led by Prof. Alexander Romanov, have discovered a new class of OLED host material, that is highly efficient and also is very easy to synthesize, and thus could be very cheap to produce.

Compared with PPBI, one of the popular hosts for blue OLEDs, the new 1,3,5-oxadiazines (NON) materials possess the same or improved characteristics, such as wide band gap and high triplet state energy up to 3.3 eV, whilst costing 100 times less after sublimation. Dr Hwan-Hee Cho from Optoelectronics Group at the University of Cambridge performed the first tests in deep-blue OLED architecture to demonstrate that NON-hosts can result in up to 21% EQE at practical brightness with CIE colour coordinates (0.17, 0.16) – outperforming other commonly used hosts in the same device stack. NON-host materials and their further derivatives have a strong potential for the OLED community to unlock high-performance electronic displays.

Researchers from the Universities of St Andrews, Kyoto and Kyushu have coincidentally developed state-of-the-art multi-resonant TADF (MR-TADF) OLED emitters, based on a helical boron-nitrogen-oxygen doped nanographene design.

In these multiple studies, the researchers have shown that it is possible to obtain deep blue, narrowband emission, very fast reverse intersystem crossing rates constants, and high-efficiency vacuum-deposited OLEDs.

UK-based OTFT display backplane developer SmartKem announced that it signed a collaboration agreement with based PMOLED-maker RiTdisplay, for the production of OTFT-based AMOLED displays. SmartKem further said that Innovate UK and the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs will support this project with a grant of around $530,000.

Smartkem will provide its proprietary OTFT materials to RiTdisplay to integrate within its OLED displays. If successful, the project will create the world's first commercially ready AMOLED display made using organic transistors, which will outperform RiT's PMOLEDs with higher brightness, lower power consumption and higher resolutions. Both companies hope that the project will be completed in 2026. 

Researchers from the UK's Northumbria, Cambridge, Imperial and Loughborough universities developed a new Hyperfluorescence OLED emitter system based on a new molecular design, which is highly efficient and simple to produce.

The researchers explain, that in Hyperfluorescence  systems, the elimination of the Dexter transfer to terminal emitter triplet states is the key towards OLED efficiency and stability. Current devices rely on high-gap matrices to prevent Dexter transfer, which unfortunately leads to overly complex devices from a fabrication standpoint. The researchers developed a novel molecular design in which ultranarrowband blue emitters are covalently encapsulated by insulating alkylene straps. 

UK-based PolyPhotonix announced that it has raised $10 million from Prevail Partners, which will help the company perform trials for the FDA with hopes to market its Notura eye mask in the US.

PolyPhotonix's Noctura 400 is a sleep mask that uses green OLED lighting panels for a non-invasive treatment for diabetic eye disease (DED). which helps patients with Diabetic Retinopathy. Pioneer supplies the OLED panels for PolyPhotonix.

UK-based OTFT display backplane developer SmartKem has closed a $24.6 million private placement financing. Prior to the financing, the company also completed a reverse acquisition transaction with Parasol Investments Corporation (Parasol), a public Delaware corporation, whereby SmartKem became a wholly owned subsidiary of Parasol which later changed its name to SmartKem and will continue with the company's business as it is.

SmartKem says that the new financing will allow the company to continue and scale and expand the production of its ink material, its electrical design automation tools and its foundry services.

UK-based PolyPhotonix, has been researching OLED technologies for many years, and its first commercial product will be the Noctura OLED sleep mask which helps patients with Diabetic Retinopathy.

The company announced today that it has signed a deal with Pioneer for the supply of OLED panels for the sleep masks.

Helio Display Materials, based in the UK, was spun-off from both Oxford and Cambridge University, to commercialize photoluminescent and electroluminescent perovskite-based materials for the display industry - with solutions for the OLED, LCD and Micro-LED markets.

Our sister site, Perovskite-Info, posted an interview with Helio's CEO, Simon B. Jones, discussing the company's technology and business.