Introduction... 4 About the author... 6 What is an OLED? OLED: An Organic Light Emitting Device... 7 Different kinds of OLEDs...

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2 Table of Contents Introduction... 4 About the author... 6 What is an OLED?... 7 OLED: An Organic Light Emitting Device... 7 Different kinds of OLEDs... 9 How an OLED display is made The backplane Depositing and patterning Vacuum evaporation Laser annealing Inkjet printing Other production methods Encapsulation Scaling (beyond Gen-5.5) Lifetime of OLED devices OLED power consumption OLED displays under direct sunlight Are OLEDs really green? Challenges ahead OLED displays AMOLED displays on the market Samsung AMOLED displays Nokia ClearBlack Display (CBD) PMOLED displays on the market OLED TVs White OLED based displays... 29

3 OLED microdisplays Flexible OLEDs today Transparent OLEDs today D OLEDs OLED displays in automobiles Hot OLED gadgets OLED Lighting Why OLED lighting? And why not? OLEDs vs. other lighting sources OLED panels and design kits OLED lighting summary The OLED lighting industry The OLED industry The OLED value chain Investing in OLEDs The OLED market - today and tomorrow A final word Acknowledgments Appendixes Appendix A: Glossary Appendix B: OLED companies Appendix C: Where to buy OLED modules Appendix D: OLED Fab generations Appendix E: A short OLED history Appendix F: Other emerging display technologies Appendix G: A short introduction to 3D displays

4 Introduction When you think about futuristic displays, you probably envision OLEDs. OLED technology can enable thin, efficient and bright displays, and can be even flexible and transparent. A rollable laptop display? A television embedded into your wall which turns transparent when not in use? A display embedded within your window or car windshield? OLEDs can make all this happen. 6 flexible OLED (source: ITRI) OLEDs are made from light-emitting organic materials, and these materials can also be used for white lighting. An OLED light bulb is actually a thin film of material that emits bright light - and can be color-tunable, flexible and even transparent. OLEDs are quite efficient, too. Transparent OLED (source: ETNews) Do you think this sounds too far-out? OLEDs are already here today. Companies such as Samsung, LG, Sony and others are already producing OLED displays mostly used in mobile phones and MP3 players. Total annual sales are over $1 billion - and these companies are investing billions of dollars towards larger displays and more efficient lighting panels. 4

5 OLED lighting panel (source: OLLA) This book will provide a thorough introduction to OLEDs. The first chapter will focus on the technical issues: how OLEDs work, how an OLED is made (and why is it so complicated to make large ones...) and the challenges ahead. In the second chapter we ll learn what kind of OLED displays are available today and who s using them. The chapter also includes an updated status of OLED displays and TVs. The third chapter is all about OLED lighting: we ll see what kind of OLED panels you can buy today, what we can expect in a few years and how OLEDs can be used to revolutionize the lighting industry. In the fourth chapter you ll find an in-depth look into the OLED industry: the kind of companies involved in this market today, the OLED market size and forecasts for the future. Finally, the appendices provide a comprehensive list of OLED companies, an introduction into other emerging display technologies (such as e-paper, pico projectors, and quantum dots), a short history of OLEDs and a glossary and abbreviations list. 5

6 About the author Ron Mertens is a software engineer, husband, father and display technologies blogger. Ron first stumbled across OLEDs in an online BeOS community forum back in 1998; in July 2004 he launched OLED-Info to offer daily news and resources for the OLED community. OLED- Info is considered the web s leading OLED portal. OLED-Info is just part of Ron s technology web site network (which includes sites on e-paper, e- readers, pico projectors, 3D displays, Graphene, MRAM and Spintronics). Ron is married to Michal, lives in Herzelia, Israel and is a father to two beautiful girls. In his spare time he likes to hike, ski (which isn t easy to do in sunny Israel), take photos, play the piano, read and evangelize about OLEDs. You can find out more about Ron s software and web sites over at metalgrass.com. 6

7 What is an OLED? OLED: An Organic Light Emitting Device An OLED is a solid-state semiconductor made from a thin film of organic (carbon-based) material that emits light when electricity is applied. OLEDs have a similar structure to LEDs (which can be referred to as Inorganic LEDs) but unlike LEDs, OLEDs are suitable for small displays, TVs and thin area (panel) lighting. How do OLEDs emit light? When current is applied, electrons flow from the cathode to the anode. In other words, the cathode pushes electrons into the emissive layer, while the anode removes electrons from the conductive layer (which leads to holes in the conductive layer). The new electrons in the emissive layer combine with the holes in the conductive layer and create excitons. This process releases photons - and thus light is created. Different types of emissive materials can be used to change the color of the light. The intensity of the light is controlled by the amount of current applied. A lot of research has been performed (and is still continuing!) into creating more efficient materials and structures. Some OLED designs use only two layers, while other use more than five. Material wise, there is a tradeoff between the color saturation, lifetime and efficiency. Some OLED materials are also cheaper to produce or easier to use in production. OLED vs. LCD (and Plasma) An LCD display uses a white-light source (either a cold-cathode fluorescent lamp or an LED), a couple of polarizing filters, liquid crystals and color filters. Compared to this, OLEDs are much simpler in design: it is an emissive technology that does not require backlighting and color filters. From this basic design architecture, we can understand most of the advantages OLEDs provide over LCDs: Low power consumption: an LCD always needs to power the backlight, even when it needs to light up just one pixel in the whole screen (although in newer Full-Array LED based LCDs it is possible to provide local-dimming methods which are better in that regard). A black OLED pixel does not draw any power, and so on average an OLED is more efficient then LCDs. Fast response time: LCDs are notorious for their slow response time, which is around 2 ms at best. An OLED can achieve 0.01 ms or even better. An OLED will not exhibit ghosting and highspeed video 'smear'. Fast response time is also crucial for active-shutter 3D in which the screen has to switch between the left and right images very quickly. Better contrast: a black OLED pixel is really black, as it emits no light. A black pixel in an LCD means that the polarizing filters completely blocks the white-light beneath it: but it doesn't really block all of the light, and in most LCDs a black pixel will actually be gray. Even with localdimming of full-array LEDs, the contrast ratio of LCDs is not as good as in OLEDs. 7

8 Better viewing angles: LCD traditionally offers very poor viewing angles, losing contrast when viewed from the side (or from above or below). Some technologies (such IPS-LCD) have been developed to improve the situation, but even so OLEDs still provide much wider viewing angles. Light weight, flexibility, transparency: OLEDs do not require a backlight and are lighter than LCDs, and they are much more easily made flexible or transparent. Durability: OLEDs are more durable then LCDs, especially if they are made on metal or plastic substrates (rather than glass). An OLED can operate in a broader temperature range, and can be more resistive to shock. But obviously OLEDs also suffer from some disadvantages, compared to LCDs: Short lifetime and burn in: OLED materials slowly lose their ability to emit light and simply fade, and OLEDs also suffer from the burn-in effect. Basically, if you light up just a part of the display for a long time, the lit pixels will gradually lose their brightness over time. The problem is even worse when you consider that each OLED color has a different lifetime - red color lasts longer then blue, for example. Burn-in can be compensated for, though, and modern OLED lifetime is very good which further diminishes the burn-in effect. Sunlight visibility: Because OLEDs are emissive, they are very problematic under direct sunlight as they have to compete with other light sources. In addition, the metal cathode causes OLEDs to be reflective. Some LCDs use a transflective design which allows them to reflect sunlight instead of using the backlight - which is great outdoors. But OLEDs cannot use such a design. We'll discuss OLED sunlight visibility later in the book. Expensive: Obviously, the biggest issue with OLEDs today is the price. Over the years, companies have invested billions of dollars in LCD technology and manufacturing plants while OLEDs are just starting to catch up. Making a large OLED screen today is not practical (due to the immature manufacturing technology) and is very expensive. But prices will fall as companies invest in larger production plants and better manufacturing technologies. Some believe that eventually OLEDs will be cheaper to make because of the simple design and the option to print them. An alternative to these technologies is the plasma display. This uses tiny plasma cells that emit light - each cell is one pixel and its design is pretty similar to a fluorescent lamp. Plasma displays offers better viewing angles, contrast and refresh rates when compared to LCD. The image quality is pretty similar to OLEDs. Plasma displays however are quite bulky (as the gas chambers need to be strong) compared to LCDs and OLEDs. They also, like OLEDs, suffer from burn-in. Plasma displays are also quite inefficient compared to both LCDs and OLEDs. 8

9 Different kinds of OLEDs OLED structure and materials The basic structure of an OLED is a cathode (which injects electrons), an emissive layer (this is the layer that actually outputs the photons to make light) and a anode that removes electrons. Modern OLED devices use several more layers in order to create a more efficient device in fact some companies use more than ten layers in their OLED design. The image below shows a design made by Universal Display which includes eight layers: an electron transport layer (ETL), a blocking layer, the emissive layer (EML) and the hole transport and injection layers (HTL and HIL). OLED device structure (source: Universal Display) Some companies (such as Novaled for example) focus entirely on the non-emissive layers providing just transport and injection layer materials. An efficient OLED structure can make a huge impact on the OLED efficiency and lifetime. Another method commonly used in commercial OLEDs is doping. Doping means to intentionally introduce impurities into a semiconductor, which can actually improve their operation. In OLEDs, you can insert dopants into the HTL, EML and ETL layers to increase the OLED s efficiency and also reduce the operating voltage and make the OLEDs easier to fabricate. Dopants in the emitting layers are also used to achieve the required color. 9

10 Stacked OLEDs One possible architecture for OLEDs involves placing the red, green and blue layers one on top of the other, rather than side by side. This eliminates the need for subpixel patterning and is called a Stacked OLED. Such designs can provide a smaller pixel size (and so a higher resolution). The basic stacked OLED design drives all three colors together, which means that the generated light is white. This can be useful for OLED lighting. To use this design in a display you'd need to use a color filter to create a light and use three stacked OLED subpixels. This design is called a Tandem OLED and it can achieve higher resolution than a normal design (the pixel size is only dependent on the backplane as you do not need subpixel patterning). The color filter however absorbs about 50% of the light so this is not very efficient. A true stacked OLED separates the three emitting single-color layers with transparent electrodes so each layer is separately contacted. The output color is a linear superposition of the three individual emitting elements. This means that one stacked OLED pixel is a full color pixel (no need for a color filter). In this design you do need subpixels at all which creates an efficient display with a high resolution. This is also useful for large pixel devices because the pixels will not 'break' into subpixels when viewed from close up. Top-emitting or bottom-emitting? The basic OLED design includes a reflective cathode and a transparent anode (usually made from Indium Tin Oxide, or ITO). The light is then emitted through the glass substrate, and this design is called a bottom-emitting OLED. A top-emitting OLED uses a transparent cathode (again, usually made from ITO) and a reflective anode which basically reflects the light back in the opposite direction. The top-emission design is more efficient (because in bottom-emitting OLEDs the TFT backplane blocks some of the light) and provides a larger aperture ratio so it can provide higher resolution displays. However, a non-metal cathode however is less efficient. While Sony used top emission in their XEL-1 OLED TV, it is expected that large TVs (where the pixels are larger and the aperture ratio is less of an issue) bottom emission may be the preferred design. A transparent OLED requires both the anode and the cathode to be transparent. This creates a dualemission architectures - in which the light is emitted in both directions (the display shows the image on both sides). OLED a lambertian device An OLED is basically a lambertian device, which means that the light scatters in all directions. This may be useful if you want a lighting panel, but it is problematic for displays which only needs 180 degrees emission. This means that some of the energy is wasted. 10

11 Some designs use a reflective electrode which reflects some of the light to the direction you need. Some other designs use microcavity structure which has a narrower emission spectrum and extracts more coherent light in the forward direction (to the viewer). Another interesting research area is micro lenses. The idea is to create tiny hemispheres (a few micrometers in diameter) and then deposit the organic materials on top. This helps to output more light from the OLED. Molecular weight (Small-Molecule vs. Polymer) There is a common division in OLED materials, based on molecular weight. If the weight is less than 1,000 g.mol -1, it is called a small-molecule OLED (SMOLED), and if it's a larger molecule it is called a Polymer OLED (P-OLED, sometimes called PLED or simply large-molecule OLED). P-OLEDs have great promise while these materials cannot be evaporated in vacuum, they are solution-processable, and so can be used in printing and spin-coating production methods. A large molecule allows for more flexibility in chemical 'design' and typically a P-OLED requires a lower voltage compared to a SMOLED. Some believe that low cost large-sized OLED TVs will only be achievable using printing techniques and so will use P-OLEDs. P-OLEDs were pioneered by Cambridge Display Technology (now owned by Sumitomo Chemical) which licenses the technology to companies such as Dupont, Merck and Seiko-Epson. In practical terms though, Small Molecule OLEDs are far more advanced. Vacuum deposition is a much more mature technology and the materials themselves offer better lifetime and efficiency. Virtually all OLED displays (and lighting panels) produced today are based on Small Molecule materials. In addition, intensive research (by DuPont and UDC) has been accomplished to develop and demonstrate solution-processable (printed) SMOLED materials. Solution-processable OLEDs All commercial OLEDs today use evaporable OLED materials. Other OLED materials are solutionprocessable, which means that you can use them with a solvent and deposit them using techniques such as spin-coating or inkjet printing (which is why some people refer to these OLEDs as printable OLEDs). As mentioned before, P-OLEDs are more easily adapted for solution-processing (they naturally occur in solution) than small molecule materials. Spin-coating and inkjet printing are considered to be very efficient production methods - which leads to lower material cost and finally to less expensive OLED panels. The problem with solutionprocessable materials is that they are usually less efficient and have shorter lifetime than evaporable materials due to the interaction between the organic material and the solvent. OLEDs: Fluorescent vs. Phosphorescent The OLED emissive layer (i.e. the part that releases the photons when light is emitted) can be made from either fluorescent materials or phosphorescent materials. Originally OLEDs used fluorescent emission, but these materials aren't very efficient (the maximum theoretical efficiency is only about 25%).. Phosphorescent materials are more efficient (in such materials, up to 100% of the Internal 11

12 Quantum Efficiency can be used to generate light). A phosphorescent based OLED is usually doped with an organometallic complex - which contain heavy metal atoms (such as platinum or iridium). The interaction between the heavy metal atoms and the organic atoms can result in more efficient and longer lifetime OLEDs. Phosphorescent OLEDs were discovered at Princeton University and the University of Southern California back in the 1990s. Universal Display Corporation is the owner of the IP that resulted from these studies, and is actively promoting their PH-OLED materials. It is generally accepted that if you want to create an efficient OLED device you have to use phosphorescent materials. It turns out that developing phosphorescent based OLEDs is more challenging than fluorescent ones, especially blue emitters. It is possible to mix the two kinds of OLED materials, though. For example Samsung uses a red PHOLED together with green and blue fluorescent OLEDs in their AMOLED displays (and is said to start using green PHOLEDs soon). There is often confusion between phosphors, phosphorescent and fluorescent. In general, a phosphor is a material that can emit light in low temperature. This includes both fluorescent materials and phosphorescent ones. These two types of materials differ in the decay time of the emitted light: in phosphorescent materials, there is a slow decay (above one thousandth of a second, and in some materials like the ones used in watches it can be several hours); in fluorescent materials, the delay is quicker - a few tens of nanoseconds (a nanosecond is a billionth of a second). A word on substrates An OLED can be placed on several types of substrates (the basic material on which the OLED stack is deposited). The three most common substrates are glass, plastic and metal. A glass substrate is the easiest one to use (it s the same substrate used in LCD displays) and it offers a very good barrier. All OLED display and lighting panels on the market today use a glass substrate. Besides being cheap, a glass substrate also allows you to build a transparent OLED. But a glass in general is rigid, not very durable and results in a relatively thick device. Even though there is a lot of research going into thin, unbreakable and flexible glass, next generation OLEDs are more likely to use either plastic or metal foils. A plastic foil can be flexible and transparent and is very thin. With a flexible substrate such as plastic, it is possible to use a roll-toroll inkjet printing method which is extremely efficient. A metal foil (possibly made from steel or aluminum) is not transparent, but it has some interesting properties: it is very durable, it has good heat conduction properties and can result in great looking OLED panels. Metal substrates also offer excellent barrier properties and can be used where you want to magnetically attach the OLED display or lighting panel. OLED driving methods AMOLED (Active-Matrix OLED) and PMOLED (Passive-Matrix OLED) refer to the two different methods for controlling OLED displays. A PMOLED is limited in size and resolution, but is cheaper and easier 12

13 to fabricate, while an AMOLED can be used for high-resolution displays (such as smartphone displays or TVs) but is more complicated and thus more expensive to make. A PMOLED display is driven sequentially, one line at a time. In a PMOLED all the pixels are off except for the row currently being driven. In order to make it appear bright enough, each row must be driven at significantly higher voltages to ensure that the pixel is on for a complete frame. This requires a thicker material which is less efficient. The high voltage also reduces the OLED's lifetime. The more lines you have, the more voltage you need to use and so PMOLED displays are limited in size (resolution). PMOLEDs are usually used to create small displays up to 2 or 3 inch diagonal and a maximum resolution of about 128x128 pixels. The first PMOLEDs were made in 1998 by Pioneer and were used in their car audio systems. The largest PMOLED available today is a monochrome (green) x64 wide panel by Wisechip. PMOLEDs are typically used as secondary displays in mobile-phones or for MP3 players. As clamshell mobile phone designs (which use such secondary displays) are no longer popular, PMOLED production has declined in the past few years. Besides the resolution limitation and the low efficiency, PMOLEDs are also limited in their refresh rate. Some companies have developed technologies that enhance PMOLED displays. For example, Dialog Semiconductor's SmartXtend offers a multi-line addressing scheme, pre-charge scheme and dynamic current matching. This results in longer lifetime, lower voltage and higher resolution displays (up to 432x240, currently). CDT used to offer a similar technology called Total Matrix Addressing (TMA) but now it seems that this technology was abandoned. An AMOLED display uses an active matrix which contains a TFT array and storage capacitors. This means that the pixel information is retained at times when the line is not driven and so you do not need to overdrive the pixel to achieve the required brightness (although it is possible to overdrive AMOLEDs to increase speed...). AMOLED displays are more efficient than PMOLED displays and aren t limited in size or resolution. But AMOLEDs are also more expensive and complicated to make than PMOLEDs. The first AMOLED device (Kodak's LS533 camera) was introduced in 2003, but it was not until Samsung started mass producing AMOLEDs in 2007 that the technology really took off. Most AMOLEDs today are made by Samsung and are 3-5 inches in size (the largest AMOLEDs available are Sony s 25 and 17 professional monitors and LG s 15 OLED TV, the EL9500). To sum up, if you re looking for a small text, icon or limited-graphic display to be used in an MP3 player or a similar device than PMOLED might be the display for you. But if you want a full-color, video-capable display for your smartphone, camera or TV, then AMOLED is what you need. 13

14 How an OLED display is made Making an OLED display is not easy, and it involves several stages - taking the substrate, cleaning it, making the backplane, depositing and patterning the organic layers and finally encapsulating the whole display. There are several methods used in the process. AMOLED production (source: Samsung) The backplane The backplane of a display is the switching and driving circuitry - which basically means the electronics which allows us to control the pixels in the display to show the image we want. If we look at LCD backplanes, there are two main technologies used - amorphous silicon (a-si) and low temperature polysilicon (LTPS). a-si is the most common technology used to create LCD TFTs. a-si (which is the "non-crystalline allotropic form of silicon") has several advantages that made it very easy to work with: it can be deposited at low temperatures, it can be made very thin and it can be easily deposited over large areas (usually by PECVD systems). But a-si is not perfect - it suffers from low electronic performance (mobility) and exhibits threshold voltage shifts. Polysilicon has high mobility which allows electrons to flow at about 100 times faster compared to a-si, and the LTPS 'wires' can be integrated onto the glass substrate - there's no need for external integrated circuits used as drivers. This means that LTPS LCDs can achieve higher resolutions and faster speeds. Apple's 'retina' display which features a very high resolution is using an LTPS backplane. An LTPS backplane is more expensive than an a-si backplane though, and hasn't been scaled beyond Gen-5.5 fabs because it mostly benefits small LCD displays (that require high pixel density), not large ones. 14

15 OLEDs are current driven (as opposed to LCDs which are voltage driven) and they require a stable TFT with a more complex structure compared to an LCD TFT. The minimum OLED subpixel (without compensation) uses a 2 TFT 1 Capacitor design while LCDs use a 1 TFT 1 Capacitor design. Current OLED designs use up to 6 TFTs per sub pixel to compensate for the non-uniformity of the backplane. a-si is less suited for AMOLEDs because of the voltage changes. All AMOLEDs produced today use an LTPS backplane. While this means that the TFTs are smaller than a-si TFTs would have been, it also means that is difficult to scale beyond Gen-5.5, which is required to produce large sized panels. LTPS production equipment is also more expensive than a-si equipment. There are some alternatives to LTPS, and these include a-si with compensation (which improves the temporal stability), Oxide TFTs, Super Grain Silicon (SGS) and others. Sony, LG Display and Samsung for example are developing Oxide TFTs. Sony has shown a prototype display that uses an IGZO (InGaZnOx) based TFT. Chimei Innolux is another company that plans to build an OLED fab using IGZO TFTs. Depositing and patterning In this stage you have to deposit the organic materials onto the backplane, and 'pattern' the individual subpixels. The most common methods are vacuum deposition, laser patterning, spin coating and inkjet printing. All commercial OLEDs sold today are manufactured using vacuum deposition. Vacuum evaporation Vacuum evaporation (or Vacuum Thermal Evaporation, VTE) uses a vacuum chamber in which the organic molecules are heated, evaporated and then condensed onto the (cooled) substrate. You have to use a mask to pattern the organic layer for the actual pixels (or subpixels really). This mask is called a Shadow Mask (it is also called Fine Metal Mask, or FMM) which is a very thin metal layer with slits for the pixels. This method is expensive because it is not efficient (most of the organic material turns up on the walls of the vacuum chamber or on the mask and not on the substrate). The shadow mask also limits the resolution to about 230 ppi (the printing accuracy is about 15 micrometers) and it is difficult to scale the metal mask to large substrates as it is very delicate. This method is only suitable for evaporable small molecule OLEDs. Universal Display and Princeton University developed a new method called Organic Vapor Phase Deposition (OVPD). This technology uses gas phase deposition (in a low-pressure chamber, so vacuum is not needed) in which the organic materials are transported to the substrate by an inert carrier gas (like nitrogen). UDC exclusively licensed the OVPD technology to Aixtron who offers OVPD manufacturing equipment for both R&D pilot lines and mass-production. According to Aixtron, OVPD is more efficient and precise than VTE (but it isn't used yet in mass production). 15

16 Laser annealing Laser annealing methods use a laser to pattern the organic materials. The idea is to first use VTE to deposit the organic material on a film (called a donor film), and then place this film on the substrate. A laser is used to heat the material and transfer it to substrate. There are several possible laser annealing methods; the leading one is Laser-Induced Thermal Imaging (LITI). LITI is much more accurate then Vacuum Deposition (the patterning accuracy is about 2.5 micrometers) and can achieve higher pixel densities(over 300 ppi). LITI is also easier to scale for large substrates. Inkjet printing Inkjet printing uses an inkjet printer to spray solution-processable OLED materials onto the substrate. Printing an OLED is fast, efficient and scalable. Although several companies work on inkjet printing of OLED displays, we re still some time away from actually having a production line for panels based on such technology. One of the setbacks is the need to create solution-processable OLED materials that are efficient and reliable enough. Most companies that work on printable OLEDs use P-OLEDs (which are solution-processable) but it s also possible to develop printable Small Molecule OLEDs. A printed OLED display (source: Add-Vision) DuPont (together with Dai Nippon Screen) developed a method they call Spray-Printing (or nozzle printing). This process uses a continuous stream of ink (rather than droplets used in regular inkjet). This kind of printer can be very fast (it moves over a surface at rates of 4 to 5 meters per second) - DuPont says they can print a 50 OLED TV today in under 2 minutes. This process does not involve any patterning, and each subpixel (whether red, green or blue) uses the same common structure (there s no optimization per pixel color) - this results in a less efficient display, but DuPont says that the throughput is much faster. In fact Dupont estimates that an OLED TV made in this process may be cheaper than an LCD TV. 16

17 Other production methods There are a lot of other methods invented to make OLEDs, we ll present a few of them here. Roll-to-Roll Printing of flexible OLEDs is very promising as it could prove to be the cheapest way to make large sized OLED panels (especially OLED lighting panels). Such methods use a roll of flexible substrate (metal or plastic) which can be very long. The patterning is usually done with an inkjet printer. Several companies (GE for example) are working on this approach. GE has been working on roll-to-roll printing since 2003 for OLED lighting panels. In 2007 the company reported fairly high defect rates (around 65% yield) but this was apparently fixed as today they say that the yield is between 90%-95%. One of GE's challenges was the encapsulation; to meet this they developed a flexible Ultra High Barrier (using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition) that has good transparency and adhesion. The company believes that OLEDs will eventually be cheaper than LEDs and that by 2015 they'll be able to print OLED panels that are both cheap and efficient. Prototype roll-to-roll printed OLED panels (source: GE) Spin-Coating involves spinning the substrate at high speed, and pouring solution-processable OLED materials onto it in liquid form. The materials are spread on the substrate evenly by centrifugal force. The substrate is spun horizontally (like a vinyl record turntable, and in fact a spin-coater looks pretty much like one). Spin coating can be used to make very thin films, but like Vacuum Deposition it needs an excess amount of material as some of it spins off the edges of the substrate. Universal Display developed a method called Organic Vapor Jet Printing (OVJP) which can be said to be a sort of miniaturized OVPD crossed with an inkjet printer. In OVJP, the organic material is vaporized in a small chamber and is then sprayed through a microscopic nozzle. This creates a highly collimated gas beam which is then directed to the substrate. It is very similar to an inkjet printer but does not require soluble materials. OVJP is very efficient and precise. 17

18 Encapsulation OLED materials are sensitive to both oxygen and water and in order to protect them you need to coat (encapsulate) the device. The protection layer is sometimes referred to as a barrier or a seal. The perfect encapsulation layer will offer great protection, be flexible, cheap and not labor intensive. The classic way to protect an OLED is to use glass. Glass is a great barrier, but it is also heavy, rigid and thick. Using a simple plastic barrier is not useful as it does not offer good enough protection against moisture. You can also use metal as a barrier, which is a great choice because it can be made flexible - but not transparent. Several companies are developing new coating materials made from plastic or nanomaterials. These new coating methods enable flexible, transparent films to be used as barriers, while still giving good protection for the organic materials. Such materials will hopefully be cheaper than glass. The encapsulation layer (glass or otherwise) is bonded permanently using an epoxy (or resin). A good epoxy has to feature strong bonding, low gas permeability (out-gassing) and be chemical, water, heat, flame and solvent resistant. Scaling (beyond Gen-5.5) The largest OLED fab today uses a Gen-5.5 substrate (1300x1500mm). Scaling beyond this level is not easy on both the backplane and the deposition/patterning phases. All AMOLEDs made today use an LTPS backplane. Scaling LTPS beyond Gen-5.5 is difficult and it may prove impossible for Gen-8 fabs. There are some alternatives to LTPS such as Oxide-TFTs or a-si with compensation (we discussed this subject in the backplane section above). Current AMOLED displays are manufactured using vacuum thermal deposition and shadow-mask patterning. Making a large shadow mask (that can be used on large substrates) beyond Gen-5.5 is problematic because the mask is very thin and fragile. Large masks also tend to sag towards their center (and lose dimensional accuracy). Possible contenders for deposition and patterning include laser annealing and printing technologies (which were discussed in the depositing and patterning section above). Lifetime of OLED devices All OLED materials degrade in brightness over time. When OLEDs were first discovered, they lasted for just seconds, and this short lifetime was considered one of the major drawbacks of OLED displays for a long time. Lifetime is usually measured as the time until the brightness is halved (it is sometime called half-lifetime, or L50). For OLED lighting, sometimes L70 is used (the time until the brightness reaches 70% of its original level). Over the past years though we ve seen rapid improvement. For example, DuPont claims a million hours lifetime (L50) for their third generation Green OLED. 18

19 Idemitsu Kosan's latest Fluorescent OLED materials feature 200,000 hours lifetime for green, 160,000 hours for red and between 11,000 to 50,000 hours for blue. The company's Phosphorescent OLEDs feature 150,000 hours for red and 220,000 hours for green. Solutionprocessed OLEDs are also advancing quickly. In April 2011 Universal Display unveiled new P 2 OLED materials that feature 175,000 hours for green, 125,000 for red and 8,000 for light blue. If we look at the final display and not individual pixels, the blue lifetime limits the display's lifetime. Current OLED technology is good enough for small displays, but isn't good enough for TV (LCD and Plasma display sport around 60,000 hours, or over 16 years of 10 hours per day). Because the brightness degrades over time, OLEDs have burn-in issues (this is also true for Plasma displays and older CRTs). If you have a display that shows a certain icon for long times (like an antenna or battery meter in a mobile phone or a stock ticker in a news station) those pixels will be lit more often than other pixels which will cause them to become less bright over time. The solution can be to design a GUI that will be less likely to suffer from those issues (i.e. it will even-out pixel usage). To complicate things further, different OLED colors offer different lifetime properties: blue OLEDs typically offer much lower lifetime then green or red ones. Making a dark (saturated) blue OLED is indeed a major issue, and even after years of research, it isn t possible to have a dark blue Phosphorescent OLED that has more than a few thousands hours of lifetime (as compared to over a hundred thousand for a red one). Fluorescent OLEDs offer better lifetime, and one possible solution is to combine a red and green phosphorescent OLED with a blue fluorescent OLED (Samsung, for example, are currently using a phosphorescent red and fluorescent green and blue in their AMOLED displays). Another possible solution is to use a larger blue sub-pixel (larger than the red and green subpixels) which means that you can lower the brightness of the blue sub-pixel (and it will still be perceived to be as bright as the green and red ones) so you even the lifetime of the three sub-pixels. In 2010, Universal Display offered a new architecture that adds a light-blue sub-pixel to the class RGB design (so in fact you have four pixels: red, green, dark blue and light blue). The new design (which is suitable for both displays and lighting devices) offers significant improvement in lifetime and efficiency, according to UDC. OLED power consumption When we consider OLED displays, the power consumption depends on the image shown. Unlike LCDs who always need to use backlighting (except for newer full-array LED backlit LCDs that support 'local dimming'), an OLED only uses power for lit pixels. And the brighter the pixel, the more power it consumers. Basically we can say that the brighter the image, the more power an OLED will require. For an all-white image, an OLED will actually consume more energy than an LCD display. Sony says that their OLED panels consumes less power than an LCD for images that have about 60% signal level or lower. Their measurement say that TV programs on average have a signal level that is less than 60%: News programs have an average of 55%, Sports 45% and Movies around 35%. 19

20 This does not bode well for OLEDs as computer monitors, as most web pages and software applications use black text on white background. But this could change as OLEDs become more popular. It was reported that Microsoft expect most Windows Phone 7 devices to have an OLED display, and designed the user interface as to consume less power on these displays. For OLED lighting, the power consumption is easier to understand. While the OLED lighting panels available today aren't very efficient, these are only prototypes. OLEDs will probably be more efficient than CFL lamps, although inorganic-leds will probably remain more efficient than OLEDs. An OLED has an advantage though because OLED panels are nice to look at and do not require shades (which are almost always used to hide CFL and LED lamps). OLED displays under direct sunlight OLEDs are emissive devices and so have to compete with other light sources. In direct sunlight, this can be quite problematic. In addition, the metal cathode causes OLEDs to be reflective. The first OLED mobile phones were simply not viewable under sunlight (to the point that some consumers thought that something was wrong in the display). If we look at touch OLED displays, the situation is even worse because the separation between the touch layer and the display causes the light to bounce between the layers and exaggerate the reflection. Newer OLED panels behave a lot better than older displays. The new displays are much brighter, and they also make use of a circular polarizer which helps overcome the metal cathode reflection. Some companies are using an embedded touch layer which eliminates the separation between the touch layer and the display which further reduces reflection. In fact the newest OLED technologies (such as Samsung's Super AMOLED and Nokia's CBD) are said to be better under direct light than LCD displays. Are OLEDs really green? An OLED display or lighting panel can be very efficient, and thus it is considered to be environmentally friendly. But to decide whether an OLED is really so, we need to consider some more aspects of such panels: Efficiency: We discussed OLED power consumption in an earlier section: OLEDs are generally considered quite efficient. Heavy metals: An OLED does not contain any bad heavy metals such as mercury (which is used, for example, in fluorescent lamps) and so is easy to dispose of or recycle. Phosphorescent OLEDs do use heavy metals, but these are non-toxic ones. 20

21 Materials: An OLED is actually a very simple device (at least compared to an LCD display) and so requires less parts. A white OLED for lighting is also rather simple compared to a CFL lamp for example. Production process: While today s method of making OLEDs (vacuum deposition) is wasteful in material and energy, it will be possible to print OLEDs using ink-jet methods in the future. This will mean a fast and very efficient (in both energy and material) production method. Transport: Finally, an OLED is thin and light. This means that even transporting an OLED TV compared to an LCD TV is better for the environment! Lifetime: Obviously if your device stops working after a short while and you need to replace it, this is not environmentally friendly. This is a major drawback of OLEDs, but we have seen rapid advances in the past years and expect this trend to continue. Challenges ahead OLEDs can be great - but there are a lot of challenges before OLEDs can fulfill their promise as the future display and lighting technology. Lifetime: as discussed before, lifetime is a major issue with OLEDs and even after recent advances, OLED displays lag behind LCDs and Plasma displays and aren't yet good enough for TV applications. Efficiency: OLED panels can be efficient but there is a lot of work to be done especially for OLED lighting panels. Production scaling: The major challenge today is producing a large sized OLED panel at a reasonable price. This will not be achieved until production can be scaled. The largest OLED available today are Sony s 25 and 17 professional monitors and LG s 15 OLED TVs, but these aren t really mass produced as they are made in low volumes at a Gen-3 fab and carry a high price tag. Most analysts believe that large (32 and larger) OLED TVs will only start to appear at around 2012 or 2013, and will still be priced at a premium compared to LCDs. We are still far away from unlocking the technology s real potential: to provide cheap, efficient, flexible and transparent panels. There is still a lot of work to be done: better OLED production techniques (such as ink-jet printing), efficient and reliable OLED materials, thin flexible and transparent substrates and more. 21

22 OLED displays OLEDs have been available on the market for over a decade now - and we have come a long way since Pioneer started offering car-audio systems with small monochrome PMOLED displays in OLED is now a billion dollar industry - mostly from brilliant touch-enabled AMOLED displays for mobile phones. Sony NW-A840 MP3 player (source: Sony) In 2009, total OLED display revenue was estimated to be around $800 million, out of which about $500 million were from AMOLED displays and the rest from PMOLEDs. The biggest AMOLED producer in 2010 by far was Samsung. The biggest PMOLED makers are RiTdisplay, Pioneer, TDK and Visionox. It is estimated that in 2010, total OLED sales reached about $1 billion. It is expected that this will double in Almost all AMOLEDs being produced today are in the 2.4 to 5 range. Most of these go into smart phones and digital cameras. Almost all phone makers have decided to use AMOLEDs in their premium phones (including Samsung, Nokia, LG and HTC). In fact, Samsung cannot keep up with demand for AMOLED displays and as a result some companies (including Samsung themselves) had to switch to LCD in some phone models. During 2011 several new AMOLED production lines are expected to go on-line, the largest one will be Samsung s 5.5-Gen line that costs over $2 billion and will eventually increase Samsung s capacity tenfold. According to research by isupply, small OLED displays currently carry a premium of about 30% over similar sized LCD displays. Other experts estimate that Samsung's Super AMOLED cost about 10% 22

23 more than Apple's retina display. isupply estimates that the 3.5 AMOLED used in Nokia s N8 phone costs $39.25, including the touch overlay. The OLED TV market is still in a very early stage. Back in 2007, Sony offered the 11 XEL-1 OLED TV which was priced at about $2,000 and was considered more of a technology demonstration than a commercial product. During 2010 Sony stopped offering the XEL-1 and now only offer professional OLED monitors (sized 7.4, 17 and 25 this largest size will cost over $7,000). LG are offering the 15 EL9500 OLED TV- which also carries a high price (around $3,000) and is not made in mass volumes (it isn t available in the US yet). Mass production of OLED TVs isn t expected before Sony XEL-1 (source: OLED-Info) AMOLED displays on the market Samsung Mobile Display (SMD) is Samsung s business unit in charge of OLEDs, and they have a 4- Gen plant that can produce about 3 million 3 panels a month (although most panels today are actually 3.7 and 4 in size, so monthly panel volume is lower than this). SMD s largest client is Samsung Electronics - who use AMOLEDs in several of their high-end smart phones, including the successful Galaxy S range (which sold over 10 million units in 2010). In February 2011 LG Display started mass producing AMOLEDs in their new 4.5-Gen plant. LGD says that they have signed supply contracts with five companies (including LG Electronics and Nokia). In 2009, Taiwan s CMEL was also producing AMOLEDs - up to 7.6 in size (although at a much lower volume than Samsung). Towards the end of 2009, CMEL was acquired by Innolux (which is now known as Chimei Innolux) and stopped producing AMOLEDs. It seems that Chimei Innolux is on the verge of producing new 3.2 and 3.5 AMOLED panels. AU Optronics is another company that used to produce AMOLEDs, then stopped and is now back into AMOLEDs with production planned for

24 Because Samsung only sells to large customers, it is not possible to find AMOLED displays today in small quantities. This will hopefully change towards mid 2011, when AUO and Chimei Innolux start to produce AMOLEDs and offer them to low-volume customers. Even though OLEDs can theoretically be cheaper than LCD, it is not true of today s models. AMOLEDs carry a premium over even the most high-end LCD displays. It is estimated that OLEDs cost about 20% more than an LCD of the same size. Samsung AMOLED displays Samsung is currently producing full-color AMOLEDs in 2 to 4 in size (and they plan to start producing larger panels, up to 7 during 2011). Samsung use a PenTile RGBG layout (explained in the next section) in all their AMOLED displays except in the newest Super AMOLED Plus (which will soon become available). Samsung uses Vacuum Deposition today, but according to our information the company plans to move to laser-induced deposition (LITI) which will enable higher resolution displays (over 300 ppi) and will also be cheaper. Samsung Galaxy S (source: OLED-Info) Materials wise, Samsung is using a red phosphorescent OLED (made by Universal Display) with fluorescent blue and green OLEDs. Samsung is building a new 5.5-Gen plant and the first production line started producing AMOLEDs in May When finished, the new plant will increase their capacity ten-fold. The displays made in this new plant will also be more efficient and have longer lifetime compared to Samsung's current displays (there are reports that Samsung will start using phosphorescent green in addition to the red). In 2011 the capacity is predicted to double over 2010 capacity. The new plant will cost over $2 billion. Following the catastrophic 2011 earthquake in Japan Samsung had to delay the plant expansion plans by a few months (because of Nikon equipment shortages). 24

25 Samsung s AMOLED investment in the next few years is estimated to reach $10 billion. Samsung is very up-beat about OLEDs, and considers them to be the display of the future - they estimate that over 500 million small panels will be sold annually by 2015! Samsung s AMOLED business is profitable today, after years of heavy investments. Pentile subpixel matrix Samsung s Pentile subpixel matrix technology is used in all of their AMOLED displays (except the newest Super AMOLED Plus). Pentile uses a RGBG matrix - the green sub pixels are smaller and are interleaved between the red and the blue sub pixels. This means that each real pixel uses only two subpixels compared to a classic Real-Stripe subpixel matrix which uses three subpixels (RGB) for each pixel. Pentile takes into account the fact that the human eye is more sensitive to green localization, and in such display each subpixel participates in more than one pixel. Pentile matrix s main advantage is a higher resolution as overall each pixel is smaller. Other advantages include a simpler driver (less subpixels) and lower power consumption. But the display is not as sharp or clear as a real-stripe display and some people do not like Pentile displays. Samsung decided not to use PenTile for their latest Super AMOLED Plus displays. Super AMOLED One of the disadvantages of AMOLEDs is their readability under direct light. In order to address this weakness, Samsung developed the Super AMOLED display (announced in January 2010) which integrates a thin (under 0.001mm thick!) touch sensor. This enables a better image than an AMOLED with an external touch layer - and also better visibility under light. Samsung says that these displays perform 20% better under sunlight compared to regular touch AMOLEDs (in which there is a space between the touch layer and the display which increases reflectivity). Reviews of Super AMOLED displays have been great; it is usually considered to be the one of the best mobile display technologies - on par with the new Retina IPS-LCD technology used by Apple on the iphone 4. Samsung Electronics has been integrating Super AMOLEDs into virtually all high-end mobile phones and market acceptance has been highly positive. It was said that SMD was selling Super-AMOLEDs to Samsung Electronics exclusively for a while. This was denied by Samsung, but the fact remains that no other company has announced a Super-AMOLED device until very recently (and today there is just one non-samsung device with such a display: the Dell Venue phone). Super AMOLED Plus In January 2011 (during CES 2011) Samsung announced the Super AMOLED Plus display. This is an evolution of Super AMOLED displays which no longer uses the PenTile subpixel matrix. Super AMOLED Plus has 50% more subpixels compared to Super AMOLED. The new displays are also thinner, brighter and use 18% less energy. The only downside is that each pixel is a bit larger - so for example a 4.3 Super AMOLED Plus has the same resolution as a 4 Super AMOLED. 25

26 When Samsung announced these new displays, they also announced the first phone to sport them - the Infuse 4G, which will have a 4.5 display. The second phone with a Super AMOLED Plus will be the Galaxy S2, the successor to the very popular Galaxy S. Nokia ClearBlack Display (CBD) Nokia has been using AMOLEDs in their mobile phones for quite some time. The first high-volume Nokia phone to have an AMOLED display was the N85 announced in August Since then Nokia has released several AMOLED phones, including in most of their newest high-end smart phones (such as the N8, E7 and C7). Nokia C6-01 (Copyright Nokia 2011) 26

27 In September 2010, Nokia announced a new display technology called ClearBlack Display (CBD). CBD is actually an AMOLED display with a special polarizing filter on top which blocks incoming light and so CBD displays perform better under direct sunlight. Nokia has announced three phones with CBD displays (the C6-01, E7 and the X7). According to reviews, CBD displays are excellent and offer the same performance as Super-AMOLED displays (even though the technology behind the two displays is quite different). PMOLED displays on the market PMOLED displays are smaller (up to 3 usually) and simpler than AMOLED displays and are mostly used to display character data and icons. The largest market for PMOLED displays is in MP3 players and sub-display for mobile phones (these use matrix graphic displays). Character PMOLED (source: Winstar) Total PMOLED revenues were about $300 million in a lower number than in The main reason that the PMOLED market is decreasing is that clam-shell phone designs are not popular today, and a lot of these designs used PMOLED sub-displays. However, PMOLEDs used in automobiles seems to be a nicely growing market. Most PMOLEDs available today are sized 1 to 3 while the largest PMOLED available is a wide panel monochrome 5.5 diagonal (made by Wisechip). A typical graphic PMOLED is usually 1.5 in size offering 128x64 resolution in a single color. Some PMOLEDs offer 65K colors. 5.5 PMOLED display (source: Wisechip) 27

28 One of the most interesting usages lately of PMOLEDs is Mitsubishi s Diamond-Vision OLED displays. These displays use PMOLED tiles (128x128 pixels each) to create huge (100 or larger) displays. Towards the end of 2010, Mitsubishi installed the first such display at Merck s new Material Research Center in Darmstadt, Germany - this display has 60 modules (offering 1280x768 resolution), measures 3.84 m by 2.3 m and weights 480 kg. Merck will use the display as an information system for presentations and events. OLED TVs In November 2007, Sony announced the world s first OLED TV, the 11 XEL-1. The XEL-1 was never produced in volume (Sony made about 2,000 a month until they stopped producing it during 2010) - and was priced at about $2,000 (and some say Sony lost money on each unit sold...). Sony actually considered the XEL-1 to be a technology demonstration more than a commercial product. During 2008 Sony promised a larger OLED TV within a year, but this project was scrapped later on. It seems that Sony is now focused on professional OLED monitors. In February 2011 they announced new professional OLED monitors for the broadcasting industry using 16.5 and 24.5 OLED panels. There are two variants (the higher-end BVM series and the PVM series). The monitors will ship in Q The BVM-E250 will cost $30,000 and the BVM-E170 will cost $15,000. This is only about 10% more than the equivalent LCD models. The PVM monitors are much cheaper (The PVM-1741 will cost $4,900 and the PVM-2541 will cost $7,400. Sony is also offering the PVM-740 with a 7.4 OLED. The second ever OLED TV was LG s 15 EL9500, announced in January Similar to Sony s XEL-1, the EL9500 is very expensive (around $3,000) and isn t made in mass volumes (in fact it isn t even being sold in the US). According to recent reports, LG will introduce new OLED TVs towards the end of 2011 (or beginning 2012) - but these will still be premium displays. Prototype 31 OLED TV (source: LG) Making a large size OLED panel is still a huge technical challenge, and we do not expect to see competitively priced OLED TVs until 2012 at the earliest. OLEDs are facing fierce competition from LCDs - which are getting better in every aspect and cheaper every day. 28

29 White OLED based displays Some companies are working towards displays that are based on white OLED materials instead of RGB color ones. The idea is that these displays are easier and cheaper to fabricate, and the development can later be used for OLED lighting panels. WOLED BLU LCD The simplest approach is to use a 'simple' white OLED lighting panel as a backlighting unit for an LCD display - replacing the white LED or CCFL lamps. OLEDs can be used to create thin and efficient LCD panels. Even if you want to support local-dimming, the driving element and deposition of the OLED materials are much simpler than a True OLED TV. The problem is that OLEDs are still very expensive and the advantages over LED based LCDs are not very great - so it does not seem to be worth the price premium. It is currently unlikely that anyone will commercialize such a TV. WOLED CF displays Another approach is to use white OLED pixels with color filters (WOLED CF). This work was pioneered by Kodak s OLED unit (now owned by LG Display). Kodak's technology uses 4 sub pixels, which are all made from white OLEDs. Over 3 sub pixels you place simple color filters (red, green and blue). The fourth pixel remains white (without a filter) and is used to increase the display s brightness. This technology is also referred to as RGBW. These displays are less efficient than OLED RGB subpixel designs, because some of the light is filtered out by the color filters. To get the same brightness you'd need more emitting material, and the fourth sub pixel makes the TFT more complicated. But such displays may be easier to produce overall than a display which uses a different OLED material for each pixel, and so could result in cheaper displays (this is debatable though). In March 2011 we heard reports that LG Display's upcoming Gen-8 OLED fab will actually make WOLED based TVs. LG Display will use Kodak's RGBW technology. True OLED vs. OLED TV? It is likely that within 2-3 years we'll start seeing OLED TVs on the market and it is also possible that we'll see both technologies on the market: 'True RGB OLED TVs' and WOLED TVs with color filters. It's very likely that both technologies will be marketed as 'OLED TVs' and this might cause a lot of confusion in the market. Chimei Innolux for example is showing new AMOLED panels that reportedly use WOLED with color filter technology, but the brand name of these panels is TRUEOLED... OLED microdisplays One of the earliest markets for OLEDs was in microdisplays: emagin started offering the first OLED microdisplay back in OLED microdisplays provide the usual benefits over LCD microdisplays: lower power consumption, wider viewing angles, better colors, better contrast and a faster refresh 29

30 rate. OLEDs can also operate in a wider temperature range - which is very useful for security/defense applications, the largest market for OLED microdisplays today. SXGA OLED-XL microdisplay (source: emagin) OLED microdisplays are fabricated on the control circuitry (on the silicon) and are completely solid state. While OLED microdisplays are mostly used for military devices (in binoculars, pilot heads-updisplays, etc.) there are consumer applications too - near-eye displays and camera viewfinders for example. There are several companies offering or developing OLED microdisplays, including emagin, MicroOLED and Rohm. It seems that the only company that actually ships these kind of displays today is emagin. One interesting development is bi-directional OLED microdisplays - a display that also includes an eye-tracking camera in the same sensor (basically, the idea is to place photo-diodes between the OLED pixels). The Fraunhofer Institute has shown prototype devices and envisions creating interactive data eyeglasses which display information and also track eye movement for UI control. In April 2010 the Fraunhofer established a spun-off company called Dresden Microdisplay to commercialize their OLED microdisplay technology, although we do not know whether they have plans to produce bidirectional microdisplays. Flexible OLEDs today One of the most exciting features of OLED displays is flexibility, but while a lot of companies are researching flexible OLEDs, there aren t any commercial products yet. There are still challenges in fabricating the OLED on the plastic or metal substrate, using flexible driving electronics, flexible encapsulation and making the whole device reliable and efficient. 30

31 4.5 WVGA flexible OLED (source: Samsung) It s important to know that there are several degrees of flexibility. At one end of the scale there is the curved display - which is not bendable (it s rigid, but curved). At the other end you have rollable displays - ones that you can open and close (fold like a newspaper) many times. Some companies have shown OLEDs that can be bent up to a certain angle. A bendable OLED can be great to be used as a wearable display, opening up all sorts of new designs and applications that we cannot even imagine today. Flexible OLED (source: Universal Display) The following section is an overview of the current status of flexible OLED research. Samsung has shown a 4.5 (800x480) flexible AMOLED made on a polyamide (plastic) substrate (deposited by vapor deposition). The brightness is 250 cd/m 2 (candela per square meter, see appendix for further details) with a contrast ratio of 100,000:1. Those displays can be bended and folded: a most impressive demonstration of the technology. Samsung says that such technology could be commercialized at around Some experts believe that Samsung will be able to commercialize flexible AMOLEDs as soon as

32 Samsung has been showing another kind of flexible OLED, aimed for passport and ID cards. This is a small 2 (240x320) 260K color display that requires very little power - it actually uses the RF power from the contactless reader - there's no battery at all here. It s a very interesting idea, but we do not know how close Samsung is to actually producing such displays. Sony is also working towards flexible display - and the company actually envisions rollable TVs in the future. In May 2010 the company unveiled a 4.1 rollable OLED display featuring 423x240 at 121 ppi. Sony had a demo where the display was wrapped around a pencil, opening and closing all the time while showing a movie. Sony has spent several years developing the technology needed to fabricate such a display (the material used to create the Organic TFT took them 5 years alone). TDK is choosing a more down-to-earth route. The company has shown 3.5 flexible PMOLED panels offering 256x64 resolution. The displays are made on a plastic substrate and can be bent to a radius of up to 25 mm. TDK claims that the displays offers almost the same contrast, brightness and lifetime as their glass-substrate PMOLEDs, and they plan to start producing them towards the end of TDK is using a white OLED emitter with color filters (and TDK are also working on monochrome versions) and will start mass production towards the end of Flexible PMOLED (source: TDK) As is usual in such cases, the US army (or the US Department of Defense, to be specific) is funding a lot of research - as they re interested in wearable displays for soldiers. Universal Display together with LG (and L-3) have recently delivered eight wrist-mounted OLED displays to the US army. Those 32

33 full-color 4.3 displays feature QVGA resolution and are built on thin, flexible metal foil. The backplane, an amorphous-silicon (a-si) TFT, was fabricated by LG Display. The displays are rugged and not bendable, they are simply curved so as to fit in a bracelet. Transparent OLEDs today OLEDs are inherently transparent - but to make the whole display (or lighting panel) transparent isn t simple. You have to make all the layers (the substrate, driving electronics and encapsulation) from transparent materials. Yet it seems that transparent OLEDs are closer to the market then flexible ones. 19 Transparent AMOLED prototype (source: ETNews) Samsung seems to be leading in transparent AMOLED development. In fact, in early 2010 it was reported that the company wants to dominate the transparent display market - planning to introduce a range of new products during 2010 (including navigation systems that are embedded in automobile windshields). True to that word, in January 2010 Samsung announced the world s first transparent OLED product - the IceTouch MP3 player. The IceTouch sports a 2 full-color transparent OLED, and was supposed to launch during the first half of 2010 for around $330 - but unfortunately this never happened, and we re still waiting for official word about this product. In 2010 Samsung also unveiled a 14 (960x540, 200 cd/m 2 brightness) transparent (75) OLED laptop prototype - which caused a lot of hype. Again, reports suggested that Samsung could release this as a real product within but that didn t happen as well. Samsung continues to show prototypes though, and their latest display on show is a 19 transparent OLED, unveiled towards the end of Samsung is not alone in this research of course. LG has shown their own transparent AMOLED prototypes, and so have AU Optronics. TDK is working on transparent PMOLEDs, and it's likely that the first transparent OLED on the market will be a PMOLED. Lenovo is set to release the S-800, a feature phone with a transparent PMOLED, driven by Dialog Semiconductor's SmartXtend technology. 33

34 It is most likely that the actual OLED maker is TDK which had been showing such prototypes back in Ceatec 2010 using Dialog's drivers. TDK displays are 2 in size and offer 320x240 resolution. In 2010 TDK said that these displays can already be mass produced and they are only waiting for customer orders and it seems that Lenovo will indeed be the first one. Transparent PMOLED (source: TDK) One of the biggest issues with transparent displays is finding the right use for them. A transparent phone or laptop is obviously cool - but what is it really good for? One can think of some nice applications such as displays embedded in windows or automobile windshields, but using transparent displays for monitors, phones or laptops doesn t really make a lot of sense. A transparent, thin OLED TV which is invisible when turned off is a nice concept though. 3D OLEDs One of the applications that might push OLED TVs into the market is 3D. Beside the usual advantages of OLEDs, they offer two important features that benefit 3D TVs: fast response time and no polarizing filter. 34

35 A 14 3D OLED display (source: Samsung) Active-Shutter 3D (which is the most common type of 3D used in TVs today) is a simple method to make stereoscopic images: the TV alternates the display images for the left and right eye - once the image for the left eye, and once for the right. You use Active-Shutter 3D glasses which include tiny transparent LCDs that are synced to the TV and they block each eye in turn. The effect is that each eye sees only the images intended for it, and you get 3D vision. The problem with active-shutter TVs is that they need a fast response time to switch between the images (if you want a 60 Hz movie, you actually need a 120 Hz refresh rate) and LCDs suffer from image crosstalk and ghosting. OLEDs offer a much better response time than LCDs and thus are great for active 3D (Plasma TVs, by the way, also offer better active-shutter 3D images over LCDs - because of their fast response time). OLEDs are also better than LCDs for polarized (passive) 3D - as they do not use a polarizing filter as part of the design. Adding the polarizing filter needed for 3D to an LCD is complicated and expensive. Several companies (including Sony, Samsung and LG) believe that OLEDs will be great for 3D and this is one of the features that will help push OLED technology, as 3D is one of the hottest trends in TV these days. Sony has been showing 24.5 active-shutter 3D OLED prototypes for quite some time, and in January 2011 the company unveiled a glasses-free (auto-stereoscopic) 3D OLED prototype (again at 24.5 ). There are some reports that Sony plans to release this as a professional broadcasting monitor during LG has presented a 31 passive 3D TV in August 2009, which seems to be very close to commercializing (there are reports that LG plans to release it in 2011). LG is also working on small glasses-free 3D OLEDs for mobile displays and presented a prototype featuring 360x320 resolution in November

36 Both Samsung and AU Optronics have shown 14 active-shutter 3D OLED monitors during 2010, although we do not know whether they have any plans to commercialize such products. OLED displays in automobiles One of the markets for OLED displays is the automotive industry. There is a lot of information that needs to be conveyed in a car, and OLED displays can be used as: Dashboard displays Multimedia displays Windshield transparent OLEDs Back-window alerts and messaging There are several car models that feature simple PMOLED displays in their dashboard. The Lexus 2010 RX, for example, uses a white OLED that supplements the main 8 LCD display. OLEDs have been used in audio systems for a long time - in fact the first commercial OLEDs were used in Pioneer s car audio systems back in Hyundai Blue-will concept with a transparent OLED behind the wheel (source: Hyundai) Using transparent OLEDs to display information on the windshield is an exciting possibility, and several companies are exploring this route. Samsung, for example, envisions a navigation system that displays the information right in front of the driver. Transparent OLEDs can also be used in other ways: Kia is showing a car concept called POP that has a transparent OLED panel behind the steering wheel. The OLED displays the speed, battery charge and more information. A transparent display is not the only way to display information on the windshield though - some companies (Pioneer for example, together with Microvision) are planning to use laser pico-projectors for exactly the same purpose. 36

37 An interesting use case for OLEDs was presented in the EDAG light-car concept. This is an opensource car project uses configurable OLED tail-lights (amongst other OLED displays within the car). The driver can use those displays to show custom signs on the rear window - to alert the driver behind him, for example. Hot OLED gadgets During the past couple of years dozens of new mobile phones, digital cameras and other products with OLED (mostly AMOLED) displays were introduced. Here s a short list showing some of the more popular and interesting gadgets with OLED displays that are either already shipping or will ship soon. Samsung Galaxy S2: The successor to the popular Galaxy S, the S2 will have a 4.3 Super AMOLED Plus display offering 800x480 resolution, 1 GHz dual-core processor and NFC. The Galaxy S2 will ship in May Sony BVM-E170/BVM-E250: A set of professional Full-HD OLED monitors for the broadcasting industry, featuring 16.5 and 24.5 OLED panels. The monitors will ship in May 2011 (the BVM-E250 for $30,000 and the BVM-E170 for $15,000) - which is only about 10% more than the equivalent LCD models. Sony also offers cheaper alternatives (PVM-1741 for $4,900 and the PVM-2541 for $7,400). Lenovo S-800: A feature phone with a 2 transparent PMOLED (320x200) display, not shipping yet. Sony PSP NGP: Sony s next-generation portable gaming console has a large (5 ) touch AMOLED. It will ship towards the end of Olympus XZ-1: An enthusiast compact digital camera with a 3 VGA OLED display. Cowon D3 Plenue: An Android-running PMP with a 3.7 touch AMOLED, full-hd support and Wi-Fi. Google Nexus-S: Google s flagship Android v2.3 phone is made by Samsung and features a 4 WVGA Super-AMOLED display placed under a curved glass screen. SonyEricsson Liveview: An Android communication accessory with a 1.3 color PMOLED. Sony NW-A850: A thin walkman with a 2.4" 240x400 OLED display. Nokia E7: One of Nokia's numerous AMOLED phones. The E7 has a 4" ClearBlack AMOLED (640x360). Samsung NX100: A hybrid DSLR digital camera with a 3" AMOLED. Mitsubishi Diamond Vision OLED: A modular PMOLED based outdoor screen offering 100" or larger displays. Each PMOLED module offers 128x128 pixels (pixel size is around 3 mm). 37

38 Nikon S80: A digital camera with a 3.5" touch AMOLED. Nokia N8: Nokia's flagship Symbian phone has a 3.5" touch AMOLED. Dell Venue Pro: Dell's Windows Phone 7 portrait slider has a 4.1" touch AMOLED. Samsung Galaxy S: Samsung's Android phone has a 4" Super AMOLED. The Galaxy S has several variants and is a very successful phone (Samsung sold more than 10 million units in 2010). Cowon J3: An A/V player with a 3.3" touch AMOLED (480x272). HTC Incredible: An Android phone (v2.1) with a x800 AMOLED display. Due to OLED supply issues, HTC had to switch to LCD displays during Samsung Wave s8500: Samsung's first Bada phone was also the first phone to have a Super AMOLED display (3.3", 800x480). Samsung Beam: An Android projector phone (with a DLP WVGA pico-projector). The Beam has a 3.7" WVGA Super AMOLED, but it was never actually sold by Samsung (expect for some small markets such as Singapore). LG EL9500: LG's 15" OLED TV has a 15" panel (1366x768) that is only 1.7 mm thick, featuring a 100,000:1 contrast ratio and less than 0.01 millisecond response time. The TV is shipping in Korea and in Europe for around $3,000. Google Nexus One: Google's first phone was made by HTC and had a 3.7" WVGA touch AMOLED. Microsoft Zune HD: A flash based A/V player with a 3.3" 480x272 touch OLED. For more OLED gadgets, see OLED-Info's comprehensive OLED device list: devices 38

39 OLED Lighting Some consider OLED technology to be the future of lighting, promising thin and efficient lightemitting panels. OLEDs also offer exciting new design opportunities as they can be made flexible, transparent and color tunable. OLED lighting panels (source: Lumiotec) OLED lighting is being researched by all major lighting companies around the world (including OSRAM, GE and Philips) as well as dozens of smaller companies and start-ups. OLED lighting panels are still very difficult to produce and are not as efficient as the technology can theoretically deliver. But some companies are already producing and offering OLED panels for experimental design kits and premium lighting providers. The first OLED lamp was introduced by OSRAM back in The lamp (designed by Ingo Maurer) used 10 OLED panels, and OSRAM only made 25 lamps altogether (each costing around 25,000). Today there are several premium OLED lamps available from several companies. In 2009, Philips became the first company to offer OLED panels, under the Lumiblade brand. Lumiblade panels are still selling today - mostly for designers to experiment with the new technology. Philips also sold some panels for premium commercial installations (for example Aston Martin s new showroom has 800 Lumiblade panels hanging from the ceiling). Today, there are three companies that offer OLED lighting panel samples - Philips, OSRAM and Japan s Lumiotec, and we expect several more companies to offer their own panels during The largest OLED panel shown to date was unveiled by the European OLED100.eu project (led by Philips, OSRAM, Novaled and the Fraunhofer IPMS). The panel is 33x33 cm in size (active area of 828 cm 2, aperture ratio of 76%) and offers 25 lm/w at 1000 cd/m 2 luminance. The most efficient panel 39

40 being produced today is Philips' Lumiblade Plus which offers 45 lm/w using phosphorescent materials. The most efficient OLED technology to date is Universal Display's 102 lm/w panel (the US DoE's target efficiency for OLED lighting is 150 lm/w). The OLED panels available today can realistically only be considered prototypes: they are expensive, made in small quantities in pilot lines and the efficiency is usually very low (around 20 lm/w for most panels, while a CFL lamp is about 70 lm/w). Those panels are small (the biggest one available today is 20x20 cm) and made using a glass substrate. Real mass-production of OLED lighting samples is still some years away, as companies struggle with technical issues surrounding creating cheaper and better panels. OLEDs for general lighting will probably not reach the market until 2015 (if at all), and some believe that OLEDs will only ever fit in niche markets such as in-vehicle lights or decorative and premium lighting. It is possible to create flexible and transparent OLED panels - in fact in October 2010 the Fraunhofer Institute has unveiled transparent OLED lighting panels as part of their upcoming TABOLA panels series - and these will be available in Q OSRAM have also demonstrated transparent OLED lighting panels, as have Philips. Philips believes that such panels may become commercialized in Flexible OLEDs seem to be further away, but a lot of companies are working towards them, including GE (together with Konica Minolta), Philips, AU Optronics, Bayer, Visionox and others. Transparent OLED lighting panels (source: Philips) 40

41 Why OLED lighting? And why not? OLED is considered by many to be the most exciting next-generation lighting technology. The first reason is efficiency: OLEDs can theoretically be very efficient; some believe that it will be possible to reach 150 lm/w with OLED displays. OLED panels do not contain any mercury - so they are easy to dispose of and recycle. This all means that that OLED is a very green lighting technology. Flexible OLED lighting panels (source: GE) The second reason why people are so excited about OLEDs is the design possibilities that OLEDs offer. OLED is a thin area-lighting device - you have a panel that emits light - this is not a pointlighting device like an inorganic-led. OLEDs can be made flexible and transparent - so an OLED lamp can be placed in your window, and when turned off you won t see it. Or your OLED panel can be wrapped around a pillar or any curved surface. A couple of companies for example are researching the use of flexible OLEDs in Photodynamic Therapy. The possibilities are endless! 41

42 Another good property of OLEDs is light temperature. OLEDs can emit great looking light which can be very natural. In fact OLEDs can be made to be color-tunable. So you can change the light color the same way you are using a dim-switch today. Researchers have created an OLED lighting panel that changes the light temperature during the day, mimicking the sun light at the same time. The biggest problem with OLED lighting is the price - the panels that are available today are prohibitively expensive, and some believe that OLEDs will always remain a lot more expensive than LEDs and CFLs. Several companies are working towards new manufacturing methods (using roll-toroll printing for example) which will hopefully lower the cost - and perhaps actually make OLED lighting affordable. We also have to keep in mind that all those exciting properties (large-size, efficiency, flexibility, transparency) are not yet available in today s OLED panels. Currently the panels being produced are small (the largest is 20x20 cm), made on glass and aren t very efficient. It will probably take years for companies to actually produce flexible, transparent and large-size OLEDs that are also efficient. OLEDs vs. other lighting sources There are three popular lighting technologies today - LEDs, Fluorescent (CFLs) and Incandescent light bulbs. Let s look at those different technologies and see how they compete with OLEDs. Incandescent lamps have been around for ages, as they are simple and cheap to make. The basic idea is heating a metal wire to a high temperature, which makes it glow. The light emitted by those lamps is considered to be very pleasant. The problem is of course the efficiency - around 90% of the energy is wasted in heat - the light efficiency of such lamps ranges from 10 lm/w to 25 lm/w (in halogen lamps). Some countries have already banned the sale of these lamps because of their low efficiency, and it seems that in the coming years this will happen in the US and Europe as well. A CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lamp) is a small Fluorescent lamp that is very popular today as a replacement for Incandescent lamps. CFLs are gas-discharge lamps that use mercury to emit ultraviolet light, which then causes a phosphor to emit visible light. While being more complicated and expensive, these are much more efficient (up to lm/w). The main two problems with CFLs are the mercury (which makes them hard to dispose of) and the color temperature. CFL light is very white and cold. An LED is a semiconductor that emits light (similar to OLEDs, but made from inorganic materials). LEDs offer several advantages over CFLs: they are more efficient (up to lm/w), they are smaller and they have longer lifetime. LEDs are also more durable. LEDs can be made in a variety of colors and they do not contain any mercury which is another advantage. However, LEDs are much more expensive and are currently used mostly for premium lighting fixtures. Most people believe today that in the future the lighting market will be shared by all three technologies: CFLs, LEDs and OLEDs. OLEDs will be the most expensive, but will offer freedom of design: an area-emitting panel (as opposed to LED s point-lighting) that can be flexible and transparent. Another hidden benefit of OLEDs is that they do not require any lamp-shade. LED and 42

43 CFL lamps aren't very pretty and you almost always 'hide' them behind shades. This obviously lowers the efficiency as some of the light is filtered. OLED panels and design kits There are several companies that offer OLED panels and design kits today. Those panels are very expensive and are mostly used for design experiments or premium lighting installations or lamps. From left to right: An OSRAM Orbeos, Lumiotec and Philips Lumiblade panel. (Source: OLED-Info) Philips Lumiblade Philips was the first company to offer OLED lighting panels and started to sell them under the Lumiblade brand back in April Philips panels are made on glass and come in a variety of shapes and colors: squares, triangles, circles, hexagons and some flower-shaped panels. The panels are not very efficient - around 20 lm/w (comparable to an incandescent lamp), although the Lumiblade Plus offers 45 lm/w (more on this below). 43

44 Blue Philips Lumiblade OLED panel (source: OLED-Info) Philips is offering an OLED driver which costs 76 and can power up to 4 panels. The panels are very expensive: the cheapest one costs 77 (a blue, red or white 32x32 mm hexagon). A 70x70 mm square costs 180 and a 47x130 mm rectangle costs 269. In April 2011 Philips unveiled the Lumiblade Plus which is the world's most efficient panel under production offering 45 lm/w. It's available in one size and color (white square, 7x7 cm) for 120 (minimum quantity is 100 units though). This panel was developed by Konica Minolta and is produced by Philips. It features phosphorescent materials. Lumiblades have been used in several interesting installations in the past 2 years. For example, British designer-artist collective random International used 900 panels to create their You Fade to Light interactive display - which acts like a mirror. Aston Martin has recently opened a new show room which uses 800 OLED panels hung from the ceiling (this was designed by Jason Bruges Studio). Philips reports that customer reaction is very positive - people say it is great to have access to this brand new technology. In fact, it is obvious that Philips OLED lighting unit is not profitable - Philips are offering these panels to show the company s technological edge and commitment to OLEDs. Read OLED-Info's hands-on review with Philips' Lumiblade panels here: philips-lumiblade-oled-light-first-looks. OSRAM Orbeos OSRAM s OLED lighting product family is called the Orbeos, and it was introduced in November OSRAM offers two round panels (diffused and mirrored, 79 mm in diameter and only 1.8 mm and 2.1 mm thick) and one rectangle panel (132x48 mm, 1.8 mm thick). OSRAM say that the 44

45 efficiency is 25 lm/w, the brightness is 1,000 cd/m² with power input of less than a watt, and the lifetime is around 5,000 hours. The color of the Orbeos is warm-white. OSRAM Orbeos (source: OLED-Info) You can buy the panels online - the price is 240 each. OSRAM also offers a nice development kit which includes the driver with a rechargeable battery (which charges via USB). OSRAM says that they see a high interest in their OLED panels. Obviously, as is the case for Philips, OSRAM are offering those panels as a technology demonstration and not as a real commercial product (at least not yet). OSRAM panels have been used in several artistic installations in several art shows, and are also used in at least two OLED lamps (by WAC lighting and by OSRAM themselves). OSRAM Orbeos (source: OLED-Info) In November 2010 OSRAM announced that it will build a new pilot production line for OLED lighting in Regensburg, Germany. The company will invest 50 million (around $70 million) in the production facility (it will have about 200 employees) and in OLED applications research. OSRAM plans to begin working on the new line in mid

46 Read OLED-Info's hands-on review of OSRAM's Orbeos panel here: Lumiotec OLED lighting kits Lumiotec OLED panel (source: OLED-Info) Japan s Lumiotec have started to offer OLED lighting panels in February 2010, and are currently making 60,000 Version 2 panels a year. They offer panels in several shapes (squares and rectangles), sizes and colors. Prices range from 115 to 350. The square panel is rather large (145x145 mm, active size 125x125 mm) and is quite impressive compared to both OSRAM s and Philips panels. The panel is 4.1 mm thick, weights 107 grams and offers 4,000 cd/m 2 brightness and a lifetime of 100,000 hours (at 1,000 cd/m 2, 50% luminance). The efficiency of Lumiotec s panels is quite low: 11 lm/w. Read OLED-Info's hands-on review of Lumiotec's Version 1.0 OLED panels: Fraunhofer Tabola Towards the end of 2010, the Fraunhofer IPMS Institute announced that they will soon introduce new OLED lighting panels under the Tabola brand. Tabola OLEDs will come in three sizes (35x75 mm, 75x75 mm and 150x75 mm) and in several colors. The panels can come with an optional Liana (a vine) shaped grid. The Fraunhofer will also make transparent versions of the Tabola. The Fraunhofer's original plan was to release design kits in Q1 2011, but apparently these plans are delayed. 46

47 Fraunhofer Tabola (source: Fraunhofer) The panels will be made at COMMEDD (Fraunhofer's Organic Electronics production center in Dresden, Germany) using their Gen-2 pilot production line. Fraunhofer hasn't released much technical information, except the brightness (1000 cd/m²) of the panels, and the fact that the panels are stacked OLEDs the grid versions feature double unit stacks and the grid-free version a triple stack. Verbatim Velve In February 2011 Verbatim announced their OLED lighting panels under the Velve brand. Verbatim says that these are available now in 'production quantities' but it's unclear whether they are really shipping any panels (and they have not yet released pricing information). Verbatim offers just one size 14x14 cm. Interestingly, the OLED is color tunable which means that you can change the light color (or temperature) of the panel. Verbatim suggests setups in which the light changes during the day to mimic the natural light you'd expect from the sun at the same time. Verbatim Velve (source: Verbatim) 47

48 The Velve panels were developed by Mitsubishi Chemicals and produced by Pioneer. They are based on small molecule OLED materials and offer 28 lm/w efficacy and 8,000 hours lifetime. Kaneka OLED panels On March 2011 Kaneka said they will accept OLED lighting panel orders in Japan and Europe, although this hasn't happened yet. Kaneka offers dimmable square panels in five colors (warm white, red, orange, blue and green). The brightness ranges from 1,000 cd/m² to 5,000 cd/m² and the efficiency is around 20 lm/w. Lifetime is 10,000 hours. Kaneka OLED panels (source: Kaneka) We do not know the price of these panels, although Kaneka says that the OLED panels cost around 2 million (approx. $24,000) per square meter (we do not know if that's the production cost or purchase price). LG Chem OLED panels LG Chem announced their OLED lighting market entry in November 2009, showing four different OLED panels (sized 50x70 mm, 150x20 mm, 150x30 mm and 150x150 mm). Their original plan was to start producing in H LG Chem use Universal Display's green and red PHOLED materials and SFC's deep blue fluorescent material. 48

49 LG Chem OLED panels (source: Acuity Brands) In May 2011 Acuity Brands announced two new OLED lamps that use LG Chem panels. Those lamps will be available in Q so it is assumed that LG Chem will only start production in 2012 or towards the end of According to Acuity Brands the panels offer lm/w and a lifetime of 15,000 hours (D70). OLED Lamps Several companies are offering OLED lamps- from small desk lamps to large chandeliers which use hundreds of OLED panels. All of these lamps are considered premium lamps - you need to pay a hefty price to own a lamp that uses the newest lighting technology. OSRAM PirOLED (source: OSRAM) 49

50 The first available OLED lamp was introduced in July 2008 by OSRAM. It was a desk lamp designed by Ingo Maurer which used 10 OLED panels (132x33 mm each). OSRAM only made 25 units, each costing around 25,000. In November 2010 OSRAM introduced their second lamp, the beautiful PirOLED - a floor lamp that uses 5 Orbeos panels and 5 LEDs and costs 9,800. WAC lighting is also offering an Orbeos based lamp, the SOL chandelier. Philips are offering two OLED lamps, the Edge and the O Leaf. The Edge is a desk lamp that uses one rectangle-shaped OLED and costs 2,200. The O Leaf is actually the most affordable OLED lamp at only 1,300, and it can be used as a table lamp or fixed on the wall. Philips is also offering the MirrorWall - a large OLED installation that uses white Lumiblade panels to create an interactive mirror (using a camera). The MirrorWall can be yours for around 10,000 per m 2. Blackbody BigBang OLED chandelier (source: Blackbody) Blackbody is the commercial brand of Astron FIAMM for the general lighting industry; since May 2010 the company has introduced 6 OLED lamps. These range from the small Light Photon (a desk lamp designed by Philippe Starck which costs $5,900) to the huge Big-Bang chandelier which uses 282 OLED panels. The company is producing their own panels (white and red rectangular OLEDs). 50

51 OLED lighting summary Here's a short summary of OLED panels on the market (or announced panels that will ship soon): Company / Brand Size Efficiency (approx) Price Notes Philips Lumiblade 32x32 mm to 47x lm/w 77 to 269 Philips Lumiblade Plus OSRAM Orbeos 70x70mm square 45 lm/w x79 mm round, 132x48 mm rectangle Lumiotec Ver 1 145x145 mm square 11 lm/w Lumiotec Ver 2 Fraunhofer Tabola 97x97 mm square to 287x97 rectangle 35x75 mm to 150x75 mm 25 lm/w ,000 ($930) 11 lm/w ?? Verbatim Velve 140x140 mm 28 lm/w? Kaneka Square panels 20 lm/w? LG Chem Square pane lm/w? Multiple colors and shape available World's most efficient panel, 100 units minimum order Available as mirrored or diffused Not available anymore Multiple shapes, sizes and colors. Not available yet, will have a transparent version Not available yet, will be color tunable Not available yet, will come in five colors Will be available by Q1 2012, using red and green PHOLEDs. The OLED lighting industry OLED lighting has enjoyed a lot of interest and investments in the past few years - driven by higher energy costs and large government investments into clean and efficient energy sources. It is interesting to see how the three major countries in the lighting industry (US, EU and Japan) are trying to advance OLED lighting - each in its own way. In the US, the Department of Energy considers OLED to be a potential technology for next-generation lighting, and they are giving millions of dollars in grants for OLED lighting projects, lead by companies (such as GE, Dupont and Universal Display) and universities. Of course, the DOE also supports other technologies, such as Inorganic LEDs, Quantum-Dots-based lighting and more. The EU is tackling this differently, encouraging companies, universities and research centers (such as the Fraunhofer Institute) to collaborate on OLED lighting research in several areas. There are over a dozen such projects led by companies such as OSRAM, Philips, BASF, CDT, Novaled and Aixtron. Most of these projects are developing new technology in order to make cheaper and more efficient OLED panels, but some of them are also involved in luminaire (light fixture) design as well as potential applications for OLED lighting. 51

52 In Japan the government is less involved, but several companies have joined forces for the OLED lighting market. In May 2008, a group of companies headed by Mitsubishi, Rohm, Toppan Printing and Mitsui have established Lumiotec - a new company that handles production and marketing of OLED lighting panels. Lumiotec is using technology developed by these different companies, and is already producing and shipping panels. Mitsubishi and Pioneer are developing OLED lighting together (to be sold under the Verbatim brand) and Idemitsu Kosan and Panasonic have a jointventure of their own (started in March 2011 and called Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting). 52

53 The OLED industry In the last few years the OLED industry has exhibited very strong growth, as OLEDs are widely considered to be the leading next-generation display and lighting technology. Today there are over a hundred companies (both large and small) researching, developing and producing OLEDs and the OLED industry is already a billion-dollar market, if we look at final product sales (currently OLED displays only). Most research companies believe that the market will quickly grow to several billions of dollars. There are three major markets for OLEDs today: small/medium displays for mobile devices; televisions and lighting. Each of these markets is a multi-billion dollar opportunity. OLEDs have also the potential to unlock new markets that we cannot imagine today - thanks to their flexible and transparent nature. The OLED value chain Here s our look on the different sections in the OLED industry: OLED chemicals/material companies - developing and/or producing OLED emitting materials, or other related materials (doping or transport materials for example) OLED encapsulation companies Manufacturing equipment companies OLED production - whether PMOLED or AMOLED displays or OLED lighting panels OLED display driver makers OLED display module distributors or resellers Consumer Electronic companies that use OLEDs in their devices or TV sets Other related companies (working on flexible substrates, conductive inks, innovative OLED applications, etc.) You can check out the appendixes for OLED-Info s comprehensive list of OLED companies. Investing in OLEDs One possible way to enjoy the fast growth forecasted for OLEDs is to invest in companies that will be part of the OLED boom. There are a lot of companies involved in OLEDs - from large multinational corporations such as Sony, Samsung or GE to small startups. 53

54 Large companies that have an active OLED program might be a good investment, but it s unlikely that a growing OLED market will make a significant change in the business of those companies. Of course the companies that are early in the game will probably enjoy the growth while companies that are still hesitating on OLEDs might be left behind in these markets. Smaller companies and startups obviously have more to gain if OLEDs do succeed, but most of these companies are private and only large investors are able to invest in such companies. Keep in mind that this might prove to be a risky investment - OLED displays might never be competitive with LCDs, newer technologies (such as QLEDs) might be developed that will make OLEDs obsolete, and even if OLEDs are a huge success - it does not mean that an individual company will survive to enjoy it. Here's a list of public companies with an active OLED program which might have a large effect on their business: Aixtron AG emagin Idemitsu Kosan LG Display Samsung SDI Universal Display Corporation More information about those companies can be found in the appendixes. If you're looking for public companies that are only involved with OLEDs, then as far as we know there are only two options: emagin and Universal Display Corporation (both trade in the US). Disclosure: the author of this book holds some shares in both companies. The OLED market - today and tomorrow In this section we ll provide information about today s OLED market and what the future holds. It s not easy to forecast what will happen in such a market - and we will only include publically available information from research companies covering the OLED industry. Small OLED Displays The OLED display market is estimated to be around $1 billion (in 2010 it actually exceeded $1 billion, according to DisplaySearch). We do not have PMOLED/AMOLED breakdown numbers for 2010 yet, but in 2009 total sales were estimated to be around $800 million. Of this, $500 million came from AMOLED displays while the rest ($300 million) was PMOLED displays. In 2010, virtually all 54

55 AMOLED displays were produced by Samsung Mobile Display and the biggest PMOLED makers were RiTdisplay, Pioneer, TDK and Visionox (in that order). AMOLED production (source: Samsung Mobile Display) In 2010 Samsung couldn t meet demand for their AMOLED displays, so the market didn t grow a lot. It is estimated that about 40 million AMOLED phones shipped in The PMOLED market probably continued to shrink. This has been the trend in the last couple of years as clamshell mobile phones are getting less and less popular (sub displays for these phones is/was the largest market for PMOLEDs) will be an exciting year for AMOLEDs. Samsung have just started mass production in their new Gen-5.5 plant which will double Samsung s capacity (Samsung says that the plant will eventually increase their capacity ten-fold), but of course Samsung needs to find customers for all those AMOLEDs - and we expect Samsung Electronics to introduce new phones and hopefully tablet computers that use AMOLEDs during the year. Samsung AMOLEDs are also getting better in terms of quality (brightness, resolution, etc) which should also drive AMOLED adoption. In 2011 we expect at least two new companies to start mass producing AMOLED displays - LG Display and AUO. This will also help to increase supply and push prices down. It is also possible that Chimei Innolux and Wintek will also start shipping AMOLED panels soon. In April 2011 DisplaySearch said that they forecast that in 2011, AMOLED displays for mobile phones shipments will reach 128 million units (up 191% over 2010) and $4 billion in revenue. In 2012 this will increase further to 212 million units and $6.4 billion in revenue. DisplaySearch are forecasting that the AMOLED market will more than quadruple itself in a year! Looking beyond 2012 is obviously more difficult. The future of small OLED displays looks bright though, with both LG Display and Samsung committed to aggressive capacity-expansion plans - both companies seem to assume that OLED displays will be the display of choice for mobile devices in the 55

56 future. In fact Samsung estimates that the market will grow to 700 million displays by 2015 (in 2010 the market was around 40 million displays). Annual OLED Revenue Trends (DisplaySearch) Rank Company Revenue ($million) Y/Y change 1 Samsung Mobile Display $566 90% 2 RiTDisplay $106-18% 3 Pioneer $60-15% 4 TDK $42 15% 5 Visionox $ % Top five OLED suppliers (2009, DisplaySearch) 56

57 AMOLED Fabs Here's a short summary of AMOLED fabs according to the latest information we have: Company Generation Monthly capacity Notes Samsung Gen million displays Currently producing AMOLEDs Samsung Samsung Samsung Gen-5.5 Phase 1 Gen-5.5 Phase 2 Gen-5.5 Phase 3 24,000 substrates Began mass production on May ,000 substrates Planned for the end of ,000 substrates Planned for the first of half of 2012 (at phase 3, the plant will have a total monthly capacity of 100,000 substrates). Samsung Gen-8 Pilot line Samsung will begin constructing this pilot line for OLED TV panels by the end of 2011, to begin mass production at the end of 2012 (or beginning 2013) LG Display Gen-4.5 4,000-12,000 substrates Currently producing AMOLEDs (4,000 substrates a month, will be expanded to 12,000 by the end of 2011) LG Display Gen-8 Pilot line Currently installing equipment for pilot line, to begin pilot production of WOLED-CF TVs by end of 2011 and mass production (24,000 monthly substrates by Q3 2012) AUO Gen-3.5 7,000 substrates Fab in construction (production expected by Q3 2011) AUO Gen ,000 substrates Chimei Innolux Gen ,000 small displays Fab in conversion from LTPS LCD to AMOLED (1/3 of the lines will make AMOLEDs). Production will start in Q Currently makes LTPS LCDs, may be converted to OLEDs (CMI plans unclear) Chimei Innolux Gen ,000 TV panels CMI plans unclear Sony Gen-3.5? Irico Display Gen-4? Visionox Shanghai Tianma Shanghai Tianma Gen-4 Gen-4.5 Pilot line Pilot line Small production volume used to make large OLED panels for professional monitors Mass production plant, company plans to raise money soon and start production in Q A pilot line is ready, working towards a mass production line for displays by Q A planned pilot Gen-4.5 line to begin production in Q and make around 1,000 substrates monthly Gen-5.5 Pilot line Will start pilot production in Q

58 OLED TV The market for large OLED displays (not just for TVs, also for laptops and computer monitors) is still quite non-existent. Sony stopped producing their 11 XEL-1 OLED TV (and it wasn t available in large volumes anyway) and are only offering large (7.4, 17 and 25 ) OLEDs in professional broadcast monitors. LG are producing 15 OLED panels (used in the EL9500 OLED TV and some professional monitors) - but these aren t sold in volume either. Sony XEL-1 (source: OLED-Info) It isn t clear when will companies manage to solve all the technical issues needed to make larger panels on the cheap, and building a large-scale production facility is a very large investment. Even when the companies are ready to produce OLED TV panels in mass volume, these will still be priced at a premium compared to LCD or PDP panels. It will remain to be seen whether consumers will agree to pay for the difference. Some companies believe that 3D will be one of the applications that will tip the balance towards OLEDs (as OLEDs offer better 3D than LCDs or even Plasma TVs). LG Display has changed their plans several times in the past year or so. Their current plan seems to include skipping directly from their current Gen-4.5 fab to a Gen-8 fab in early 2013 that will produce large size OLED panels (for TVs). The company restated several times that 2013 will be the year when they ll finally introduce OLED TV panels at a competitive price. It is estimated that LG s investment in OLED plants (for both small and large displays) will reach almost $7 billion by We have heard several conflicting reports from within Samsung regarding OLED TVs. Some managers in Samsung believe that it is too early to commercialize OLED TVs, mostly because of the high price they will carry. Other managers have said that OLED TVs are coming soon. There are reports that Samsung plans to start working on a Gen-8 pilot line soon that will be able to produce 4, OLED panels monthly, but it s not clear when they see this plant coming online. It is most likely that we won t see large panels from Samsung before It is estimated that Samsung s investment in OLED plants (for both small and large displays) will reach almost $10 billion by

59 Sony s plans for OLED TVs are even more vague. The company still has an active OLED program and they keep showing new prototypes (including a 24.5 glasses-free 3D TV prototype shown in January 2011) - but they seem to be currently focused on professional applications rather than consumer TVs. Sony also works on flexible and rollable displays, and have stated that their end target is a rollable large-screen OLED TV. isupply estimates that OLED TV panel shipments will grow quickly and will reach sales of almost 5 million units in This is still only a tiny fraction of the TV market - but it can still represent $1.8 billion in sales. OLED TV revenue forecast (source: isupply, 2009) OLED lighting The OLED lighting market is still in its infancy. While there are some companies (such as Philips, Osram and Lumiotec) that already produce and market OLED lighting panels, no one is massproducing yet, prices are very high and efficiency is low. It will probably take a few years for the companies to develop the technology that will allow them to produce efficient panels on the cheap. It is still debated whether it ll ever be possible to produce competitively priced OLED panels - and some believe that OLEDs will never be used for general lighting. 59

60 OLED lighting panels (source: OLED-Info) The worldwide lighting market is estimated at about $75 billion - so even grabbing a small percentage of it can be a huge opportunity for OLED lighting makers. It is likely that early adopters will come from the commercial lighting market rather than the residential one - as OLEDs are expensive to buy but efficient/cheap to use. Besides general lighting, OLEDs can also be used in niche lighting markets - premium lamps, in-vehicle lighting, etc. Nanomarkets predicts that the OLED lighting will generate $6 billion in revenue by 2015: around $4 billion from general lighting, $750 from vehicular lighting and $1.4 billion from back-lighting for LCD panels. Intertech Pira predicts that OLED lighting that will reach almost $2 billion in 2014, with a fast growth of 112% compound average growth rate (CAGR). Finally, DisplaySearch predicts that by 2018, OLED lighting will be a $6 billion market. Other related markets A large OLED industry (displays, lighting or both) will also spur growth in related markets such as OLED materials, flexible/transparent substrates, OLED encapsulation and manufacturing equipment. Nanomarkets for example estimates that by 2015 the market for OLED materials will reach $1.4 billion and the transparent conductor market will grow to about $500 million. The company also predicts that for OLED lighting panels, the substrate and encapsulation will account for about 20% of the cost. 60

61 A final word I've been following OLEDs since 1998, and started providing resources and daily news over at OLED-Info since 2004 and OLEDs have sure come a long way since then. Back then the market was focused on small PMOLED displays for mobile phone sub-displays, small MP3 players and car audio systems. Several companies were showing early OLED TV and lighting prototypes, but the future seemed uncertain as the big consumer electronic companies were still hesitant about the technology. Today OLED is a billion-dollar market, with small AMOLED touch displays used in smart phones and digital cameras leading the way. Medium and large sized displays are on the brink of commercialization, and several companies are offering OLED lighting samples, paving the way towards mass production of cheaper panels. OLEDs are still far from realizing their potential to provide flexible, transparent and efficient display and lighting panels. There is still a lot of work to be done but it seems certain that OLEDs are here to stay. In this book we've explained how OLEDs work, the different kinds of OLEDs and their production and methods,the current status of the OLED display and lighting markets and industries. Forecasting the future is not easy, but we've tried to provide a glimpse into the future of this technology. Finally, in the following appendices you can find a lot of reference information: a short glossary, a list of OLED companies and resellers, a short OLED history and an introduction to other emerging display technologies. If you want to remain updated about the latest OLED news and resources, be sure to visit OLED-Info. Our web site provides a wealth of information and news. Our free monthly newsletter can keep you updated about this fascinating and ever-changing technology. Here's for a bright OLED future! 61

62 Acknowledgments The biggest thanks go to my wife and daughters, who had to listen to me mumble non-stop about OLEDs for several months now (as if the normal OLED mumbling wasn't enough). I had been thinking about writing an OLED book for a long time, but finally it was my wife who said just sit down and write it already - and so it began. I wish to thank Barry Young from the OLED association, for sending me a long list of comments and suggestions for this book. I also wish to thank Daniel Holt for his proofreading and editing help and Chalie Pabst for the book design and final touches. Final thanks goes to the loyal OLED-Info readers and the OLED professionals who actually develop the OLED technology and make it all happen. 62

63 Appendixes Appendix A: Glossary AMOLED: Active Matrix OLED. An OLED display that uses an active TFT array that can be used to create large resolution displays for smartphones and TVs. CBD: Clear Black Display. A display technology developed by Nokia. A CBD display is made from an AMOLED display with a polarizing filter that boosts performance (readability) under sunlight. Cd/m 2 : Candela per square meter. A candela is a unit of luminous intensity, and cd/m 2 means the light intensity per square meter. The higher this number, the brighter the display is. CDT: Cambridge Display Technology. A UK based company (owned by Sumitomo Chemicals) that develops polymer-based OLED (P-OLED) technologies. CRT: Cathode Ray Tube. The old, non-flat, TV display technology. CRTs are made from a vacuum tube that contains an electron gun that fires on a fluorescent screen. Fab: Semiconductor fabrication plant, where integrated circuits are manufactured. LCD: Liquid Crystal Display. An LCD is a flat display technology that uses liquid crystal to module light. LCDs do not emit light by themselves and require a backlight (typically a compact fluorescent lamp or LED) LED: Light Emitting Diode. An LED is a semiconductor made from inorganic materials that emits light when electricity is applied. LTPS: Low Temperature PolyCrystalline Silicon. A material used to create TFTs for AMOLED displays and some LCD displays. Lumens (lm): a measure of the power of light as perceived by our eyes. It is also used to label the light output in lamps. For example a 23 watt CFL emits about 1500 lm. Lm/W: Lumens per watt. A way to measure the efficacy of light sources. Some sample lm/w figures: Incandescent lamps: 10 lm/w Halogen lamp: 25 lm/w CFL: lm/w LED: lm/w OLED: today around 20 lm/w, theoretically will reach 150 lm/w 63

64 OLED: Organic Light Emitting Device. An OLED is a solid-state semiconductor made from a thin film of organic (carbon-based) materials that emits light when electricity is applied. OVJP: Organic Vapor Jet Printing. An OLED deposition technique (developed by Universal Display) that uses a nozzle to vaporize materials and a highly collimated gas beam to deposit it. OVPD: Organic Vapor Phase Deposition. An OLED deposition technique (developed by Princeton and Universal Display) that uses gas phase deposition. PenTile: Samsung s subpixel matrix scheme used in Super AMOLED displays (and no longer used in the newer Super AMOLED plus displays). Samsung's AMOLED use a PenTile RGBG layout the Green sub pixels are smaller and are interleaved between the red and the blue sub pixels. PHOLED: phosphorescent based OLEDs, as opposed to fluorescent based ones. PHOLED is a trademark of Universal Display. PMOLED: Passive Matrix OLED. PMOLEDs use simple driver electronics and are limited in size and resolution. Mostly used for simple displays (in MP3 players, mobile phone sub displays, automobile dash board displays, etc.). POLED: Polymer OLEDs, sometimes referred to as PLED. POLEDs use large-molecule OLED materials (as oppose to small-molecule materials). SMD: Samsung Mobile Display. An AMOLED joint venture owned by Samsung SDI and Samsung Electronics. SMD is the world s largest AMOLED producer. SMOLED: Small Molecule OLEDs. OLEDs that use Small-Molecule based materials (as opposed to large or polymer materials). Most OLEDs made today (and all AMOLEDs) use SMOLED materials. Subpixel: Many display technologies use several monochrome sub-pixels to create one color pixel, usually 3 sub pixels (colored Red, Green and Blue) are used to create one full-color pixel. Each subpixel is driven independently of the others. Subpixel matrix: The design layout of subpixels in a display. The classic Real-Stripe matrix is a simple design in which each pixel is made from 3 subpixels, which are arranged in a row, one following the other and all in the same size. There are other schemes though for example Samsung's PenTile. Super AMOLED: Samsung s AMOLED displays that integrate a thin touch sensor. Super AMOLEDs offer better readability under light. Super AMOLED use Samsung s Pentile subpixel matrix scheme, and are used in many high-end Samsung smartphones. 64

65 Super AMOLED Plus: Samsung s newest AMOLED displays (announced in January 2011, not shipping yet) that offer better resolution and performance over Super AMOLED displays (SAP display do not use the Pentile matrix). TFT: Thin Film Transistor. TFTs are used to drive (control) active matrix LCD and OLED displays. UDC: Universal Display Corporation. A US based company spearheading phosphorescent OLEDs (PHOLEDs). VTE: Vacuum Thermal Evaporation. An OLED deposition technique that heats, evaporates and then condense OLEDs onto the substrate. Appendix B: OLED companies Add Vision Add-Vision (from Scotts Valley, CA, US) is developing flexible PLED (Polymer OLEDs) panels for display and lighting applications. Add-Vision lists CDT, Alps Electric and Toppan Forms as its licensees (CDT is also a major shareholder in Add-Vision). In 2009 Bayer MaterialScience signed a technology and patent license agreement with Add-Vision. Bayer will be able to manufacture and sell flexible printable OLEDs. Advantech Advantech is an early stage startup founded by Dr. T. Peter Brody, inventor of the Active-Matrix. Advantech developed a roll-to-roll fabrication technology that can be used to produce thin film electronic circuits at exceptionally low cost. The company plans to use this technology to manufacture AMOLED and e-paper backplanes for OEMs. Advantech showed a 4 monochrome AMOLED prototype and the company is working towards a pilot production line. They claim that their technology will be suited for large size OLED panels (for OLED TVs). Aglaia Tech Aglaia Tech, founded in 2005, is based in Beijing, China and designs, produces and manufactures OLED materials for display and lighting applications. The company produces transport, injection, dopants and emissive materials. 65

66 Aixtron AG Germany-based Aixtron AG provides deposition equipment to the semiconductor industry. Aixtron has an exclusive license from UDC to produce Organic Vapor Phase Deposition (OVPD) equipment which is used to develop and produce OLED panels - for both display and lighting. Aixtron reportedly sold several OVPD systems (we know that one of their customers is RiTDisplay, the world s largest PMOLED producer). OVPD was also used in the European OPAL 2008 project (led by OSRAM, Philips, BASF and Applied Materials). Aixtron trades on both the NASDAQ (ticker: AIXG) and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Applied Materials Applied Materials develops and markets equipment, services and software for manufacturing of semiconductors, displays and PV products. Applied Materials offers LTPS deposition systems that can used to produce AMOLED and LCD displays. In March 2011 Applied announced their new LTPS PECVD deposition system (the AKT-20K PX) which can be used to create 7 to 12 AMOLED high resolution panels. Applied is based in Santa Clara, California, US and trades on the NASDAQ (ticker: AMAT). Applied is also a shareholder in Plextronics. AsTEK Astek is a private company based in Korea that offers sapphire substrates, wafers and ingots. In 2009, AsTEK bought Leadis display driver business - which included both PMOLED and AMOLED drivers. AsTEK paid $4 million for the driver unit. AU Optronics (AUO) AU Optronics (AUO) is a display maker based in Taiwan. AUO was formed in 2001 as a merger between Acer Display and Unipac Optoelectronics (and later in 2006 it also merged with Quanta Display). It is the world s third-largest LCD manufacturer. AUO was actually the world s first AMOLED producer (and supplied 2 panels to the first AMOLED phone, the BenQ-Siemens S88) but decided to abandon AMOLED production in At the beginning of 2010 AUO restarted their AMOLED program. AUO plans include two AMOLED plants. The first is a new Gen-3.5 fab (capable of 20K 680x880 mm substrates a month). AUO has already started to install equipment and will commence massproduction in Q The company has already added a x640 AMOLED product to their web site. 66

67 AUO has a Singapore subsidiary (AFPD) that has a 4.5-Gen LTPS fab. AUO will convert a part of that plant for AMOLED production to reach a monthly capacity of 15,000 substrates. AUO is also developing flexible and transparent OLEDs, 3D OLEDs and OLED lighting panels. BASF Future Business BASF Future Business (BASF FB) is a wholly owned subsidiary of BASF AG, focused on the development of new materials, technologies, and system approaches within the business areas of Energy Management, Quality of Life and Organic Electronics. BASF FB is working towards OLED lighting materials in collaboration with OSRAM, and is also acting as a foundry for Novaled s OLED materials. Bayer MaterialScience Bayer is a global enterprise involved with health care, nutrition and high-tech materials. Bayer's material subsidiary, Bayer MaterialScience AG is developing polymer-based OLED materials in collaboration with Add Vision. Beneq Beneq, based in Finland, is a supplier of production and research equipment for advanced thin-film coatings. Beneq s offering includes dedicated coating equipment for barriers and transparent conductive oxide (TCO) for the OLED display and lighting industries. Blackbody Blackbody (a subsidiary of Astron FIAMM) is a developer and manufacturer of OLED lighting panels; the company covers all aspects from design study to mass production. The company has a Gen-2 production line (located in Toulon, France) and can produce panels up to 470x370 mm in size (they currently produce both white and red panels). Blackbody s panels offer around lm/w efficiency and use Small-Molecule OLED materials. Blackbody does not offer individual OLED panels, only complete lamps. Blackbody introduced their first OLED lamp in May 2010 (the Light-Photon, which was designed by Philippe Starck. It costs $5,900); since then they have announced 5 new lamps - from small desk lamps to the huge Big-Bang chandelier which uses 282 OLED panels. 67

68 Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) Cambridge Display is a UK based company (owned by Sumitomo Chemicals) that is the leading developer of polymer-based OLEDs (P-OLEDs) and OLED printing technologies. CDT technology has been licensed to several companies, including Seiko, Espon, Dupont and Delta Optoelectronics. CDT also lists Philips and Osram as licensees - although we know that these two companies use Small-Molecule OLEDs in their currently available OLED lighting panels. Canon ANELVA Canon ANELVA (ANalysis ELectronics VAcuum) Corporation is a Japanese company that produces major equipment for the fabrication of semiconductors and flat panel displays. The company offers PVD machines for OLED production. Cheil Industries Cheil Industries is a Samsung affiliate that produces textiles, fashion, chemicals and electronic chemical materials. In May 2011 the company announced a plan to invest $92 million in an OLED material company, to produce ETL, HTL and EML materials. Chimei Innolux Chimei Innolux (CMI) was established in 2009 in Taiwan as a merger between Innolux, CMO and TPO. Both TPO and CMO had OLED subsidiaries. CMO s OLED subsidiary was called Chi Mei EL Corporation (CMEL) and was producing AMOLED displays until the merger (up to 7.6 in size). TPO was developing small (3 and 4 ) AMOLED displays but was having some technical difficulties. It is not clear yet what Chimei Innolux s OLED plans are. Towards the end of 2010 the company said that they were planning two OLED plants - a Gen-3.5 one in Jhunan, Taiwan that will make small/ medium displays and a Gen-5.5 one that will produce large OLED panels for TVs or monitors using an IGZO (InGaZnOx, for Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide, a transparent amorphous oxide semiconductor) TFT. In March 2011 the company unveiled two new AMOLED displays and 3.5. Interestingly, CMI uses white OLED pixels with color filters (WOLED CF). 68

69 CMEL Chi Mei EL Corporation (CMEL) was CMO s OLED subsidiary and was producing AMOLED panels (up to 7.6 in size) until the merger of CMO with Innolux and the formation of Chimei Innolux. COMEDD COMEDD (the Center for Organic Materials and Electronic Devices) was established by the Fraunhofer IPMS in Dresden in 2008 with an aim of carrying out specific organic-electronics research for customers. The activities cover three main application areas: organic-based lighting and signage technology, organic solar cell technology, and OLED-on-CMOS applications. COMEDD offers research and development using innovative fabrication equipment based on three fabrication lines: a rigid substrate fabrication line (370x470 mm substrates) for lighting and organic solar cell applications, an OLED-on-CMOS line on 200 mm wafer size and a roll-to-roll prototype line for flexible substrates. Based on this infrastructure COMEDD can offer product development from system concept to pilot fabrication level. Corning Corning is one of the world leaders in glass and ceramics have been working in this area for 150 years. Corning is active in several markets - display technologies, environmental technologies, telecommunication, life sciences and others. Corning has two products aimed for OLEDs: JADE, an advanced display glass VITA, hermetic sealing solution for OLEDs (available for licensing only) CSEM CSEM (the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology) is a privately held, knowledge-based company carrying out applied research work, product development, prototyping, and low-volume production. CSEM's Polymer Optoelectronics Section offers expertise in custom designed Polymer- OLED (PLED) development, screening of polymeric semiconductor materials for organic optoelectronic devices and dedicated feasibility studies. Dialog Semiconductor Dialog Semiconductor develops mixed-signal circuits for personal, portable, short-range wireless, lighting, display and automotive applications. Dialog developed a PMOLED-driving technology called 69

70 SmartXtend that includes multi-line addressing scheme, pre-charge schemes and accurate dynamic current matching. SmartXtend enables longer lifetime, lower voltage and higher resolution displays (up to 432x240, currently). Dialog offers two PMOLED drivers both offering SmartXtend, the DA8620 (320x240) and the DA8622 (432x240). The DA8620 is used in Lenovo's S-800 to drive a TDK 2" transparent PMOLED display. Dialog Semiconductor is based in Germany and the company is listed in the Frankfurt stock exchange (ticker DLG). Doosan Electronic Doosan Electronic is a Korean based company that specializes in electronic materials, especially in the Copper Clad Laminate (CCL) industry. Doosan Electronic is co-developing phosphorescent OLED lighting with the Korean Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH). Dow Dow is one of the largest chemical companies in the world, providing materials for industries such as electronics, water, energy, coating and agriculture. Dow provides emissive OLED materials, and according to reports the companies sells materials to Samsung, which are used in their AMOLED displays. Dow trades on the NYSE (ticker: DOW). Dresden Microdisplay Dresden Microdisplay was established in April 2010 as a spin-off from the Fraunhofer Institute. The new company will commercialize the Fraunhofer's OLED microdisplay technology. Dupont DuPont is a science-based producer which is involved in many markets, including materials, plastics, electronics, energy, medical and transportation. DuPont is also involved in displays - and is developing solutions that improve display performance, reduce production costs and enable nextgeneration technologies across a broad range of applications, including displays such as LCDs, OLEDs and plasma TVs. DuPont is developing OLED materials: during 2009 they unveiled their third-generation OLED materials with extra-long lifetime (over a million hours). Their solution-processable OLED materials 70

71 (suitable for printing) are 'good enough for TVs' (29,000 hours for red, 110,000 for green and 34,000 for blue). The company has also developed a new manufacturing process that use a 'spray-printer' together with Dai Nippon Screen - which may lead the way towards cheap OLED TVs in fact Dupont says that they can print a 50 OLED TV in under two minutes. The downside of this technology is that it isn't as optimized as a regular OLED screen. DuPont also develops ceramic-based OLED encapsulation, conductive inks for printed electronics, flexible OLEDs and OLED lighting production technology. DuPont is a public company that trades on the NYSE (ticker: DD). Dynic Dynic Corporation is a multi-national company based in Japan, focused on coating, coloring, laminating and embossing. Dynic offers a range of desiccant ("Humidity Getter") products called HG Sheets that are aimed at OLED production. Eastman Kodak Eastman Kodak is primarily engaged in developing, manufacturing and marketing traditional and digital imaging products, services and solutions. Kodak actually discovered, developed and patented OLEDs back in the 1970s (many of those patents have already expired), and the company has been involved in producing OLED displays and licensing the technology. Kodak released the world s first AMOLED product (the LS633 digital camera) back in 2003, the largest (7.6 ) OLED photo frame and has licensed their OLED technology to over 20 companies. In 2001 Kodak established a joint-venture in Japan together with Sanyo called SK Display. SK Display produced AMOLED displays, but the joint-venture was shut down in In December 2009 Kodak announced that they had sold all of their OLED business to LG display in a $100 million deal. Kodak no longer researches or develops OLEDs (but the company may still offer products that include OLED displays). emagin emagin is producing and selling OLED-on-silicon microdisplays, mostly for the defense industry, used in used in products such cameras, helmets (heads-up-displays) and headsets. emagin says they have 185 customers in 32 countries, including Elbit Systems, Liteye and ITT. emagin is also conducting several R&D projects funded by the US Army. 71

72 Microdisplays can also be used in consumer products (camera viewfinders, personal display eyewear, etc.), which may prove to be a much larger market then the military market (although with lower margins). The company had a consumer visor product back in 2005 (the Z800 3D visor) which wasn t a success. emagin currently offers three microdisplays (SVGA, SXGA and SVGA 3D) and is developing higher resolution models (including ultra-high resolution 1920x1200). emagin also offers prism optics for microdisplays (which are also compatible with third-party displays). emagin recently turned profitable - for 4Q 2010 the company reported $8 million in revenue and net income of $10.2 million (which included a $9.1 million tax benefit). The company expects to record total revenue of $35 to $40 million during 2011 (compared to $30.5 million in revenue in 2010). The company is enjoying strong growth in the military market, and is now working on a new OLED deposition machine that will increase their production capacity ten-fold. emagin trades on the AMEX stock exchange (ticker: EMAN). Disclosure - the author of this e-book personally holds some shares in emagin. e-ray Optoelectronics Technology e-ray Optoelectronics Technology was established in 2000 in Taiwan to develop CD-R dyes and quenchers and OLED/PLED materials. The company offers small-molecule OLED electron transport, hole injection, hole transport, emitting materials and dopants. For P-OLEDs, the company develops emitting materials and printable materials. First-o-light First O-Lite was established in 2010 in Nanjing, China and plans to invest around $150 million to develop and manufacture OLED lighting panels. If all goes according to plan, production will start at 2012 or Fluxim Fluxim is a Switzerland-based simulation-software provider for the display, lighting and photovoltaic industries. Their software product (called SETFOS) was designed to simulate light emission from thin film devices such as OLEDs, thin film solar cells (organic and inorganic) and organic semiconducting multilayer systems. The company lists DuPont, Merck, Philips, Novaled, IBM and Samsung among their customers. 72

73 Fraunhofer IPMS The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (Fraunhofer IPMS) is a research Institute in Dresden, Germany that has been researching OLEDs since Fraunhofer are researching several OLED projects, including OLED lighting panels, bi-directional OLEDs and OLED based pico-projectors. In 2009, the IPMS opened the COMEDD research and production center. COMEDD includes a Gen-2 production tool that is used for both OLED lighting and display panels. Towards the end of 2010, the IPMS announced that they will soon introduce new OLED lighting panels under the TABOLA brand. These will be available in three sizes (the largest one will be a 150x75 mm rectangle) and several colors. There will also be a transparent version available. Fraunhofer will release design kits in the beginning of Like all OLED panels available today, the idea is that customers can perform tests and sample designs. The Fraunhofer will not mass produce these panels. General Electric (GE) GE is one of the leading lighting companies in the world, and they have an active OLED lighting program, in collaboration with Tokki and Konica-Minolta. GE is focused on roll-to-roll printing of OLED panels. Back in 2008 GE announced that it will stop developing incandescent bulbs, and focus on LED and OLED technologies. In July 2010 GE unveiled their latest panels - flexible OLEDs that are made using solution-coatable materials (phosphorescent small-molecule OLEDs) in a roll-to-roll printing process. These panels offer 56 lm/w efficiency and have commercially viable lifetime. GE plans to introduce OLED lighting products in 2011 and have shown some early prototype lamps - but the company believes that cheap and efficient panels will only become available in Heraeus Heraeus is a precious metals and technology group based in Germany. In September 2010, Heraeus bought the Clevios business unit from H.C. Stark. Clevios developed a wide wide range of conductive polymers that have been developed for use as the hole injection layer (HIL) in OLED displays. Holst Centre The Holst Centre is an independent R&D operation that was established in 2005 by IMEC (from Belgium) and TNO (from Holland), with government support. The center is located in Eindhoven, and has around 200 employees and over 20 industrial partners. 73

74 The Holst Centre is involved in several programs including one that is focused on printed organic lighting and signage. The centre develops device designs compatible with roll-to-roll (R2R) processing. Idemitsu Kosan Idemitsu Kosan is a Japanese-based company founded in 1911 that develops and markets chemicals, plastics, fuel-related products and electronic materials. Idemitsu Kosan develops and sells OLED materials and lists Sony, LG Display and UDC as clients or collaborators. During 2009, LG Display signed an agreement to buy OLED materials from Idemitsu Kosan. In 2010, Idemitsu agreed to buy 32% of LG s Global OLED Technology (LG created this company when it bought Kodak's OLED business back in December 2009). In March 2011, Idemitsu, together with Panasonic Electric Works, established a new Joint Venture to develop, manufacture and sell OLED lighting panels. The new JV (called Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting) will use Idemitsu Kosan s OLED materials. Idemitsu Kosan trades in the Tokyo stock exchange (ticker: 5019). IGNIS Innovation IGNIS Innovation is a Canadian company (established in 2000) that develops technologies in the areas of pixel circuits and driver packages for AMOLED displays. IGNIS is developing AMOLED backplane solutions using industry-standard amorphous silicon, polysilicon or other Thin Film Transistor (TFT) technologies. They also developed AMOLED driver (controller) electronics. Innovacene Innovacene is a new start-up founded in 2010 by a New Hampshire University professor. The company is commercializing new thin, organic and ultra-lightweight coating for OLED and organic solar cells. 74

75 Irico Group The Irico group was established in 1978 in China and manufactures color picture tube (CPT), LCD and LED-backlit LCDs. Irico has an active OLED program and built a pilot AMOLED production line in 2009 (in a $75 million investment). Irico s current plans include building a Gen-4.5 production line with a $245 million investment (the company is still raising funds for their expansion program). Jilin Optical and Electronic Materials China's Jilin Optical and Electronic Materials was established in 2005 and is engaged with the development, manufacturing and sales of OLED materials. The company currently offers hole injection materials, hole transport materials, light-emitting layer materials and electron transport materials. Jusung Electronics Jusung Engineering was established in 1995 and is based in Korea. The company makes production equipment for flat panel displays, semiconductors and solar cells. The company is developing largearea OLED encapsulation equipment. In April 2011, Jusung announced that the company is entering the OLED market, offering a totalsolution for OLED lighting and display production. Kaneka Kaneka is a Japanese company that produces materials - plastics, PVC and caustic soda, foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals, etc. Kaneka has been working on OLED lighting since In April 2010 they announced that their OLED panels are ready to be produced and in February 2011 they announced that they will start accepting orders in March You can read more about Kaneka's panels in the OLED lighting chapter. Kaneka believes that the price will drop to 200,000 ($2,400) next year and to 50,000 ($600) or less by Kaneka's production capacity in 2011 will be 10,000 m 2 and this will grow to 100,000 m 2 in Kaneka also plans to improve the efficiency to 60 lm/w (up from 20 lm/w today) and the lifetime to 25,000 (up from 10,000 today) by Kaneka aims to achieve 20 billion ($240 million) in sales within five years and 100 billion ($1 billion) in sales within 10 years. 75

76 Kateeva Kateeva is a start-up that has an exclusive license from MIT for an OLED deposition technology. Kateeva uses an inkjet printer and a micro-dryer called a T-Jet (or Thermal-Jet) along with proprietary inks. The company claims that their technology will enable 8.5-Gen and larger substrates. Konica Minolta Konica Minolta is based in Japan and is involved in copiers, printers, medical equipment, optical devices and thin films used to enhance picture quality in LCD. The company is researching OLED lighting, collaborating with GE and Universal Display. Together with GE, the company is developing flexible OLEDs that are made using roll-to-roll printing methods. The latest prototype offers 56 lm/w with commercially viable lifetime. In April 2011 Philips unveiled new efficient panels that are made using KM's technology. The Lumiblade Plus panels offer 45 lm/w and are available today. The nature of this collaboration between the two companies is uncertain. Konica Minolta plans to build a pilot production line that will be operative by March 2011 (investment will total $38 million). Mass production will begin in March 2014 (with a $110 million investment) and the company hopes to reach over $1 billion in yearly sales by Ledon OLED Lighting Ledon OLED Lighting was established in October 2009 as a joint-venture between the Zumbotel group and the Fraunhofer IPMS institute. The company is based in Dresden, and focuses on complete OLED lighting solutions and concepts. The company announced their first two product families, based around OLED panels from OSRAM and the Fraunhofer Institute. These panels should start shipping samples soon. LG Chem LG Chem (part of the LG Group) is developing and marketing chemicals and electronic materials. LG Chem developed electron transport and hole injection materials used in OLED panels, and is also developing OLED lighting panels (using Universal Display's green and red PHOLED emissive materials). LG Chem will start producing OLED lighting panels in Q

77 LG Display LG Display (LGD) is a large producer of displays for TVs, computer screens and mobile devices. LG Display is researching, developing and producing AMOLED displays and started mass production in the beginning of The company has a 4.5-Gen fab that is currently producing 4,000 substrates a month (this will grow to 12,000 by the end of 2011). LG Display lists Nokia and LG Electronics as AMOLED customers. Reports suggest the LGD will start building a Gen-8 AMOLED production plant soon that will be able to make 24,000 substrates a month. LGD plans to produce 55 and 31 OLED TVs, which apparently will use LG's WOLED CF technology. Production may even start during 2011, but the company believes that real mass production will only begin in Today LG Display is producing the world's largest (and only) consumer OLED TV, the 15" EL9500, which is selling in Europe and in Asia. Those 15 panels aren't mass produced and are very expensive (that TV costs around $2,500). LGD's OLED research program includes passive 3D OLED displays, glasses-free 3D OLEDs for mobile devices and flexible and transparent OLED. LG Chem, a different LG group company, is researching materials for OLED lighting, planning to mass produce efficient OLED panels towards the end of 2011 or early LG Display lists on the NYSE (ticker: LPL) and the Korean stock exchange (KRX:034220). Lucid Display Technology Lucid Display Technology (LDT) is a fabless company based in Korea, focused on display ICs. LDT offers PMOLED and AMOLED display drivers. Lumiotec Japan based Lumiotec was established in May 2008 to commercialize OLED lighting by a group of companies headed by Mitsubishi, Rohm, Toppan Printing and Mitsui. Lumiotec is the first company to mass produce panels, currently making 60,000 a year (full 24-hour capacity is 240,000 panels). Lumiotec current Version-2 panels come in several shapes, sizes and colors. The145x145 mm square offers 4,000 cd/m 2 brightness and a lifetime of 100,000 hours (at 1,000 cd/m 2, 50% luminance). Lumiotec panels are not very efficient (11 lm/w) and the company plans to start using phosphorescent materials to boost efficiency in future panels. You can read more about Lumiotec's panels in the OLED lighting chapter. 77

78 MBraun MBraun offers development and production equipment different application areas. MBraun sells equipment for OLED (and P-OLED) development and research, including a laboratory scale thin-film deposition (TFD) inside a glove box. Merck Merck is a global pharmaceutical and chemical company based in Germany, with a history that goes back to The company designs, develops and manufactures a wide range of specialized materials including high performance OLED materials. In February 2005, Merck acquired Covion, and in October 2008 Merck acquired all of OLED-T's IP. The company's OLED program focuses on solution-processable materials. MicroOLED Established in 2007, MicroOLED is a privately held company based Grenoble, France that designs and develops high-performance OLED microdisplays for near-to-eye applications. Mitsubishi Mitsubishi is a "community" that consists of a multitude of independent companies involved in a wide range of markets including automobiles, plastics, electronics, hotels, banking and more. Several of these companies are involved with OLEDs. Mitsubishi Chemicals is working towards OLED materials together with UDC. They have also entered the OLED lighting market together with Pioneer in February 2010 and are selling OLED lighting panels under the Verbatim brand (Verbatim is owned by Mitsubishi Chemicals). In the future, Mitsubishi plans to produce OLED panels using ink jet printing. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries decided to start making OLED display panels back in 2007, although no further information has been available about their plans since then. Mitsubishi Electric is producing the world's largest OLED display, the Diamond Vision OLED. These are modular displays that are made from 128x128 PMOLED tiles. Diamond Vision OLEDs are already commercially available; the first one was installed in 2010 at Merck's Material Research Center. (Mitsubishi Chemicals) (Mitsubishi Heavy Industries) (Mitsubishi Electric) 78

79 Mitsui Chemicals Mitsui Chemicals was established in 1997 in Tokyo, Japan. The company develops and markets chemicals (petrochemicals, basic chemicals, polyurethane, industry chemicals, etc.). Mitsui's Fine & Performance Chemical division develops and markets small molecule OLED materials. Mitsui is co-developing OLED materials together with Idemitsu Kosan and also owns a part of Lumiotec, a Japanese consortium that commercializes OLED lighting. ModisTech ModisTech is a Korean company focusing on OLED displays and lighting R&D, and also consulting services. Modistech has been working on flexible OLED lighting for indirect applications for quite some time, and originally planned to commercialize the technology in 2010, although we haven't heard from the company in a while. Multi-Inno Technology Multi-Inno is a Chinese based company that offers small LCD and PMOLED displays. The company's PMOLED modules range from small 0.7" monochrome panels to 2" color ones. NEC Lighting NEC Lighting (owned by NEC Corporation) was established in 2000, and the company develops, produces and markets lighting products. NEC lighting is focusing on efficient lighting products such as LEDs and OLEDs and will cease producing and selling incandescent lamps by NEC Lighting is using Universal Display s PHOLED materials to develop OLED lighting panels. NeoView Kolon NeoView Kolon is a Korean company established in 2000 (as a subsidiary of the Kolon group). The company is producing small PMOLED displays. NeoView Kolon also develops transparent OLED displays and OLED lighting panels. 79

80 Newhaven Display Newhaven Display is a north American small-display reseller. Newhaven offers both LCD and PMOLED panels (character and graphic displays). In their web site, the company lists prices for smallquantity orders. Nippon Seiki Nippon Seiki was established in 1946 in Japan and is making and selling instruments for automobiles and office automation appliances. The company produces and sells PMOLED displays, focused on automobile dashboard and electrical equipment displays. Novaled Novaled is a German start-up (a spin-off from Fraunhofer and Technical University of Dresden) established in 2001 that is developing and marketing transport-, blocking-, doping-, interlayer- and outcoupling-materials that can be used for OLED displays and lighting panels. Novaled sells materials to Samsung and had 11.2 million in revenues in Beside doping (and other) materials, Novaled also provides tailor-made OLED devices on glass or metal substrates. Novaled are researching flexible and transparent lighting panels, and demonstrated prototype lamps that use those technologies. Novaled s flexible OLED panels feature 35 lm/w efficacy with over 60,000 hours lifetime, and the company s transparent panels offer 100 cm 2 active area, 10,000 hours lifetime and over 20 lm/w efficacy. The OLED association The OLED Association (OLED-A) is a membership forum for the interchange of technical and market information. OLED-A serves its membership by fostering the more rapid development of OLED technology and OLED products, serving as a resource on OLED markets and products for media and investors, functioning as a catalyst in the development of standards for OLEDs and providing a forum to promote and market OLED technology products. OLEDWorks OLEDWorks was established in July 2010 by former Kodak OLED business experts with the goal to become an OLED lighting panel manufacturer. The company plans to start producing panels in 2014 (for the specialty and general lighting market) and enter the commercial lighting market by The company is also engaged in consulting and contract research. Displays. 80

81 Optrex Optrex was established in 1976 by Asahi Glass and Mitsubishi Electric and is based in Tokyo, Japan. Optrex designs and produces small size LCDs and PMOLED displays. Orgalight Orgalight is a supplier of organic chemicals and polymers with a focus on aromatic imidazole synthesis and semiconducting polymers. The company offers small molecule and polymer chemicals for OLED (and P-OLED) devices. The company was established in 2009 and is based in France. Orion OLED Orion OLED was spun off from Orion Electric Company on 2005 and is producing full color PMOLED displays. Orion OLED is also apparently developing AMOLED technology. Ortus Technology Ortus Technology was established in April 2010 by Toppan Printing and Casio in Japan, and is developing and manufacturing small and medium-sized displays. The company already offers several LCD panels and is also developing a 6.5" AMOLED panel. OSRAM Opto-Semiconductors OSRAM Opto Semiconductors (OSRAM OS) is a wholly owned subsidiary of OSRAM, a leading supplier and manufacturer of lighting solutions. OSRAM OS has been researching and developing OLED lighting for a long time; in 2008 the company released the world s first OLED lamp. OSRAM OS offers three OLED panels (branded Orbeos panels): two round panels (diffused and mirrored, 79 mm in diameter and only 1.8 mm and 2.1 mm thick) and one rectangular panel (132x48 mm, 1.8 mm thick). OSRAM say that the efficiency is 25 lm/w, the brightness is 1,000 cd/ m² with power input of less than a watt, and the lifetime is around 5,000 hours. The panels are available now - the price is 240 each. You can read more about the Orbeos family in the OLED lighting chapter. OSRAM also sells the PirOLED lamp which uses 5 LED and 5 OLED Orbeos panels. In November 2010 OSRAM announced that it will build a new pilot production line for OLED lighting in Regensburg, Germany. The company will invest 50 million (around $70 million) in OLED 81

82 production and research on LED applications. Commissioning of the production line is scheduled for mid OSRAM OS was also producing PMOLED display panels (under the Pictiva brand) - but this activity was discontinued in Panasonic Panasonic Corporation (which until October 2008 was known as Matsushita Electric Industrial) provides a wide range of products, from audiovisual and information/communication equipment to home appliances and components. Panasonic has been active in the area of small OLED displays through its TMDisplay subsidiary, but they sold their stake to Toshiba in The company also had plans for OLED TVs - collaborating with both Toshiba and Sumitomo, but we haven't heard any news regarding the OLED TV program since Panasonic's subsidiary Panasonic Electric Works (PEW) was developing OLED lighting panels using Universal Display's PHOLED materials, planning to release panels in In March 2011, PEW together with Idemitsu Kosan announced a new Joint Venture to develop, manufacture and sell OLED lighting panels. The new JV (called Panasonic Idemitsu OLED Lighting) will use Idemitsu Kosan s OLED materials. Peptronics Peptronics is an Israeli company, founded in 2005, founded on the basis of research led by professors Eichen & Tessler from the Technion Institute of Technology. Peptronics develops peptidebased technology that can be used to make printable polymer OLEDs for both displays and lighting. Philips Royal Philips Electronics is one of the world's largest electronics and lighting companies. Philips is involved with OLED lighting research and was the first company to offer sample panels back in April Philips Lumiblade OLED panels are made on glass and come in a variety of shapes and colors: squares, triangles, circles, hexagons and even flower-shapes. They offer around 20 lm/w efficacy and cost between 77 and 300. Philips Lumiblade Plus panels are much more efficient (45 lm/w) and are made using Konica Minolta's technology (Philips only produces and markets those panels) using phosphorescent materials. Philips Lumiblade panels are used in several art and premium-lighting installations; Philips also offers a couple of lamps using their panels. Philips research program includes transparent, flexible 82

83 and color-tunable OLEDs. You can read more about the Lumiblade panels in the OLED lighting chapter. Pioneer Pioneer, established in 1938 is based in Japan and produces home and car electronics systems. Pioneer was the first company to actually make OLED displays, but exited the OLED display market in In February 2010, Pioneer announced its entry into the OLED lighting market, together with Mitsubishi Chemicals. Pioneer is producing the OLED panels using Mitsubishi s technology. Mitsubishi markets those panels under the Verbatim brand. You can read more about these panels in the OLED lighting chapter. Plextronics Founded in 2002, as a spin-out from Carnegie Mellon University, Plextronics is developing technology that enables broad market commercialization of organic electronic devices - including OLEDs, plastic chips, polymer solar cells and organic sensors. In January 2009 the company installed a $6 million pilot-production line for OLED displays, Organic Solar and other panels. Polar OLED Polar OLED was spun-off from the University of Hull in November 2009 and is developing liquid crystal based polymer OLED materials. The company says that their materials will be far more cost effective than those available today and are currently shipping sample materials for research. RiTDisplays RiTDisplay is a Taiwanese company (spun-off from Ritek) that produces PMOLED panels. RiTDisplay is the world s largest PMOLED maker. The company is 80% owned by Kolon Industries following a $100 million investment in

84 Rohm Rohm is a Japanese company established in 1958 that is making discrete semiconductors, passive components, displays and integrated circuits. Rohm has an OLED research program working on OLED lighting displays and microdisplays. Rohm also owns a part of Lumiotec that produces and markets Rohm s OLED lighting panels. SAES Getters SAES Getters is a supplier of vacuum systems for the flat panel displays, semiconductors and fiber optics markets. The company is offering special dryer configurations for both small-molecules and polymer based OLEDs. SAES Getters also offer an optimized alkali metal dispensing solution for OLED production. Samsung Mobile Display Samsung Mobile Display (SMD) is owned (50:50) by Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI and is producing and selling AMOLED displays. SMD is the world s largest AMOLED producer by far and has a very aggressive investment plan for AMOLED plants in the next 5 years. In 2011 alone, the company will invest around $4.8 billion to increase OLED capacity (which will double in The plan is to grow it ten-fold in coming years). SMD says that their AMOLED business is profitable, and also has plans to start producing OLED TV panels - which probably won t happen before SMD has created an AMOLED display with an in-cell built-in touch panel which improves visibility under direct light. These displays are marketed as Super AMOLED and Super AMOLED Plus displays. Super AMOLED is considered by some to be the best display technology in the market for mobile devices. Samsung currently makes displays up to 4.5 in size, and will start making larger ones (up to 7 ) during SMD is also actively researching flexible OLEDs, transparent OLEDs and OLED lighting. In fact, Samsung seems to be the current leader in transparent displays (in March 2011 Samsung Electronics became the first company to mass produce transparent LCDs) and wants to dominate the transparent display market (LCDs and OLEDs) by introducing a range of products that use such displays during The company s first transparent OLED product (the IceTouch MP3 player) never made it to market, but the company keeps showing new prototype displays (including large 19 ones). Seiko Epson Seiko Epson is a global corporation based in Japan involved in imaging, robotics, precision machinery and electronics technologies. 84

85 Seiko Epson is working towards OLED displays, focused on inkjet-printing of polymer based OLEDs. Seiko Epson unveiled a prototype 40-inch OLED display in May 2004 and in 2009 they unveiled new inkjet printing technology that will enable HDTV OLEDs. Seiko Epson hopes to produce 37" or larger TVs by 2012, although that seems a bit optimistic today. In November 2011 Seiko Espon entered into a partnership with Tokyo Electron to further develop inkjet printing manufacturing technology. The company is also collaborating with Universal Display on printable OLED materials. Seiko Epson lists on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (Ticker is JP:6724). Sensient Imaging Technologies Sensient Imaging Technologies (formerly known as SynTec, and today a subsidiary of the US based Sensient Technologies Corporation) is a German manufacturer of highly specialized performance chemicals for OLED displays and laser printing equipment. Sensient started researching and developing OLEDs back in 1998 and today the company produces and markets over 100 different OLED chemicals. Shanghai Tianma Shanghai Tianma Micro-Electronics was established in 2006, and is producing small/medium TFT- LCD displays. The company is researching OLED displays and in August 2010 decided to build a pilot AMOLED production line (4.5-Gen) in a $72 million investment. Showa Denko Showa Denko (SDK) is a Japanese chemicals company established in 1908 that is active in many markets worldwide. SDK are working towards OLED lighting and plans to produce 80 lm/w, 40,000 hours white OLEDs in SDK are using Universal Display's PHOLED materials. Sichuan CCO Display Technology Sichaun CCO Display Technology was established in 2008 in Chengdu, China by Changhong Electronics group and Chengdu Hi-Tech Investment Group. The company produces PMOLED displays and has an annual capacity of 12 million displays. The company's PMOLED displays range from 0.7" monochrome to 1.5" full color. 85

86 Sim4tec Sim4tec is a provider of scientific software in the field of organic electronics. Sim4tec s main product is SimOLED, a comprehensive simulation software for electronic simulation of OLEDs aimed at research labs, universities and industrial customers. Smartdisplays Xi an Smartdisplays Xi'an is a manufacturer of small displays based in the Hi-Tech Development Zone of Xi'an, China. The company offers several monochrome P-OLED character and dot-matrix displays (their largest display offers a 128x64 resolution). Sony Sony is one of the leading consumer electronics companies in the world. Sony has an OLED research program, mostly geared towards large displays (OLED TVs) and flexible/rollable OLED displays. Sony stated that their end goal is a rollable large-screen OLED TV. In December 2007 Sony began to sell the world's first OLED TV, the 11" XEL-1 for around $2,500. The company had plans to release a larger OLED TV but later scrapped those plans and stopped producing the XEL-1 in The company is now focused on OLED monitors for the professional broadcasting industry. In February 2011 the company released two such OLED monitors (17 and 25 in size which is the largest OLED display ever commercialized). Sony is also offering several products that use smaller OLED panels such as the Walkman X series (3" touch AMOLED) and the PSP-2-NGP (5" touch AMOLED), although Sony is buying the AMOLED displays from Samsung. Sumitomo Chemical Sumitomo Chemical was been established in 1913, and since then has been researching and producing industrial chemicals and materials. Sumitomo has been working with CDT on P-OLED materials, and acquired the company in July Sumitomo had plans to produce OLED TVs and collaborated with Panasonic in but we haven't heard any news about that joint-venture in a while. 86

87 Sun Fine Chem Sun Fine Chem (SFC), based in Korea, develops fine chemicals for OLEDs, organic TFTs, PDP displays and other devices. SFC has been producing OLED materials since 2002, and is working together with Universal Display to develop and commercialize highly efficient phosphorescent OLED material systems. TCZ TCZ (owned by Cymer) is focused on developing innovative laser crystallization production equipment for flat panel displays, including OLEDs. According to press releases by the company, they sold at least two OLED production systems, one in Korea and one in Taiwan. TDK TDK was established in 1935 in Japan and develops and sells materials and products for the electronics industry. TDK produces and markets monochrome and color PMOLED displays. Towards the end of 2010 TDK unveiled new transparent and flexible PMOLED prototypes with plans to commercialize soon. Tera-Barrier Films (TBF) Tera-Barrier Films (TBF) was spun-off from Singapore's IMRE in August 2009 with financial and technical support from Exploit Technologies, A*STAR and Applied Venture. TBF develops barrier material and barrier stack technology that can be used for OLEDs and solar cells. Toshiba Mobile Display (TMDisplay) TMDisplay (Toshiba Mobile Display), founded in 2002, was originally a JV between Toshiba and Matsushita, but is now wholly owned by Toshiba. TMDisplay designs and produces small and medium sized LCD displays. TMDisplay was involved with OLED displays (both small molecule and P-OLEDs) and were even producing AMOLED panels (up to 3.5") in small volumes, but in October 2010 the company decided to freeze their OLED displays and focus on LCDs. TMDisplay is still involved with OLED lighting R&D. 87

88 Tokki Tokki (owned by Canon) manufactures vacuum process equipment and factory automation system. Back in 2009, Tokki developed the first OLED mass production system that processed both OLED / electrode material deposition and encapsulation in one system. Tokki's OLED production system has been delivered to several small molecule OLED manufactures in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. ULVAC ULVAC is a Japanese company established in 1952 that designs, manufacturers and markets equipment and materials for industrial applications of vacuum technology. Ulvac are active in flatpanel displays and provides LCD and OLED R&D and production systems. ULVAC also owns Litrex - a company that develops and markets inkjet printers for OLED displays. Universal Display Corporation (UDC) Universal Display (UDC) is one of the pioneers of the OLED industry and holds many patents related to the commercialization of phosphorescent based OLEDs. UDC is also involved with flexible, transparent and stacked OLEDs - for both display and lighting applications. UDC licenses its OLED IP and also sells OLED chemicals UDC lists Samsung, CMEL, LG and Konica Minolta as its licensees. It is known that Samsung is using UDC s red PHOLED material in their AMOLED displays and will also probably start using UDC s green PHOLED soon. UDC s new license agreement with Samsung isn t finalized yet, and the companies keep extending it for 3 months at a time. Signing this agreement could be a crucial moment for UDC - for better or for worse. AUO, Chimei Innolux and LG Display, who are also set to start producing AMOLEDs during 2011, will probably use UDC s materials as well. UDC is active in the OLED lighting market. In fact the company claims (and many agree) that if you want to make efficient OLED lighting panels, you have to use phosphorescent OLEDs. There are several companies that develop panels based on UDC s technology including Konica Minolta, LG Chem, Panasonic Electric Works, NEC lighting and Showa Denko. UDC has a $20 million joint-project with India s Moser Baer to build two OLED lighting production lines in Canandaigua, New York. UDC trades on the NASDAQ (ticker is PANL). The company's recent quarterly report (for 4Q 2010) was very positive (earnings more than doubled compared to last year) and the company took advantage of the high stock price to raise over $250 million (in a 15% dilution). It is still not clear what UDC plans to do with so much money (they now have over $320 million in cash or equivalent). Disclosure - the author of this e-book personally holds some shares in UDC. 88

89 Univision technology Univision Technology (established in Taiwan in 2000) develops, manufactures and markets PMOLED displays. Univision's product line includes full color, multicolor, and monochrome displays. In 2009, Univision was acquired by WiseChip. Veeco Veeco makes process equipment for two business segments: LED/OLED/PV and data storage. For the display market, Veeco provides Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) equipment and Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) products. Veeco provides OLED processing equipment for several companies and lists LG Display as a customer. Verbatim (Mitsubishi) Verbatim markets media for storage and flash memory products, and is owned by Mitsubishi Chemical. Verbatim markets OLED lighting panels made by Mitsubishi and Pioneer: the OLED materials are developed by Mitsubishi and the panels are produced by Pioneer. Verbatim has target sales of $335 million in 2015 and $1.1 billion in The first panels are called VELVE and the company says that they are available now although it's not clear whether they are shipping now. Verbatim offers square-shaped panels that are colortunable. Ultimately the company hopes to produce the OLEDs using ink-jet printing. Visionox Visionox is based in China and was founded by Tsinghua University and other investors in Visionox is dedicated to the development, manufacturing and marketing of display and lighting products, mainly OLEDs. Visionox has completed a 30,000 m 2 production base in Kunshan (Jiangsu Province) in a $53-$66 million investment. Vitex Vitex developed a moisture barrier film used for OLED encapsulation called Vacuum Polymer Technology (VPT). The company says that their barrier is equivalent to glass in terms of water or oxygen penetration and can be applied to flexible substrates or over a finished display. Vitex has licensed its IP to several companies and in December 2008 said that Samsung, UDC, LG and other companies are all using VPT in OLED products and prototypes. 89

90 Winstar Winstar (based in Taiwan and founded in 1998) is developing and producing small displays: LCDs, EPDs and OLEDs. Winstar are currently producing monochrome character and graphic PMOLED displays. Wintek Wintek, established in 1990 in Taiwan, produces touch panels and LCD displays (with factories in China, Taiwan and India). Wintek plans to start mass producing AMOLED panels towards the end of 2011 (possibly in collaboration with TPK) in a $100 - $170 million investment. WiseChip WiseChip Semiconductor Inc (WSI) was established in 2005 in Taiwan. The company develops and produces OLED displays. In 2009 WiseChip acquired Univision. The company offers monochrome and full-color PMOLED displays (and is one of the five largest PMOLED makers today). Appendix C: Where to buy OLED modules There are several companies that offer PMOLED and AMOLED modules. AMOLED supply is very tight at the moment - the only company that mass produces AMOLED displays is Samsung Mobile Display and they do not offer displays for small customers. Several companies used to offer AMOLEDs made by CMEL but the company halted production (after the merger into Chimei Innolux) and it is not clear when (or if) they ll resume. It 2011 several new companies will start producing AMOLEDs (including AUO and LG display, and possible Chimei Innolux) and it is expected that you ll be able to get AMOLED panels towards the end of the summer. Here s a short (and incomplete) list of OLED distributors and resellers. 4D Systems 4D Systems (based in Australia) specializes in design and manufacture of OLEDs (both PMOLEDs and AMOLEDs) and LCDs modules and driver microcontrollers. 4DS ships worldwide and has a wide distributor network in several countries. 90

91 Crystalfontz Crystalfontz is based in the US and designs, produces, and distributes standard LCD modules, TFT displays and PMOLEDs (mostly small character displays) for embedded and industrial products. They also provide technical support and embedded development assistance. Densitron Display Solutions Densitron Display Solutions is a manufacturer and supplier of standard and customized display modules utilising OLED, TFT-LCD, CSTN and touch screen technology. Densitron has been reselling OLED panels since 2002 and offer both PMOLED and AMOLED panels. Densitron is based in Europe and has distributors in the US, Africa and the Middle East. Display Future Display Future is a reseller of display modules, following fair-trade policies (which means that they take relatively small margins, leaving the profit to the actual module manufacturer. They also list their prices online for small volume orders). The company offers both PMOLED and AMOLED panels. Display Future PMOLED suppliers are Visionox and Multi-Inno Technologies. The company is based in Scotland and ships worldwide (they have a sales office in the US, too). GLYN GLYN is a reseller of display and system solutions, components and multimedia in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Glyn was founded in 1981 and is based in Germany. Glyn ships worldwide and has 6 offices in Germany, 9 more in Europe and one office in Australia and in New Zealand. GLYN offers Wisechip-made PMOLED displays, CMEL AMOLEDs and developed their own evaluation board. The company also offers OLED driving solutions made by 4D Systems. Inteltronic Inteltronic is the US sales partner for WiseChip and provides display panels, solar panels and LED lighting. Inteltronic sells WiseChip's PMOLED character and graphic displays. 91

92 OSD Displays OSD Displays (previously One Stop Displays) is based in Florida, US and has over a 15 year experience in display technologies - including LCDs and OLEDs. OSD offers standard and custom manufacturing of monochrome P-OLED, PMOLED and AMOLED displays. OSD has distributors in the US, Europe, India and Australia. US Micro Products US Micro Products is a US reseller of standard and custom engineering solutions. US Micro offers several PMOLED and AMOLED displays. The PMOLED line includes monochrome panels (from 0.7" to 3.2") and full-color ones (up to 1.8"). Appendix D: OLED Fab generations When companies build display fabs (manufacturing plants) the most basic feature is the size of the substrate produced (this substrate is then cut up to create the actual displays).there are common substrate sizes, and the companies use these as a shorthand for Generation of the fab. It turns out that the naming convention is simple - every time a manufacturer builds a fab that is larger than previously available it names this the new (and largest) generation. Sometimes two companies use a slightly different substrate size for the same generation. Common fab generation used for OLED production: Gen 3.5: 620x750 mm Gen 4.5: 730x920 mm Gen 5: 1100x1300 mm Gen 5.5: 1300x1500 mm Gen 8: 2200x2500 mm A Gen-3.5 substrate (620x750mm) can produce six 14.1 panels. A Gen-5.5 substrate (1300x1500) can produce six 32 panels. 92

93 Appendix E: A short OLED history The discovery of electroluminance in organic materials dates back to the early 1950s in France; the first working OLED was developed at Eastman Kodak (by Ching W. Tang and Steven Van Slyke) back in It took almost 10 years to produce the first commercial OLED panel - a 256x64 monochrome display for car audio systems made by Pioneer (1996). Here s a short list of major OLED milestones: 1950: Electroluminance in organic materials is discovered in France 1987: The world s first OLED device is developed at Eastman Kodak 1996: Pioneer produces the world s first commercial PMOLED panel (monochrome 256x64) 1996: CDT demonstrates the world s first polymer-based OLED 1997: Pioneer produces a 260,000 color OLED display 1998: Kodak and Sanyo show the world s first AMOLED display 2001: Sony develops a 13 full-color OLED panel 2001: Samsung develops a 15.1 OLED panel 2001: RiTDisplay starts producing PMOLED displays 2002: Philips starts shipping PMOLED displays (P-OLEDs) 2003: Sanyo announces a mobile phone with a color PMOLED (for Japan s KDDI network) 2003: Sony shows 24 OLED panels 2003: Kodak introduces the first AMOLED gadget - the LS633 digital camera 2003: Univision starts producing PMOLED panels 2004: UDC shows a flexible OLED on metal foil prototype 2004: Seiko Epson unveils a 40 OLED TV prototype 2004: OLED-Info, the world s first OLED portal is launched 2004: Sony starts shipping a PDA with a x320 AMOLED 2005: LG Philips launches their AMOLED business 2005: Sony introduces MP3 players with PMOLED displays 2005: Samsung invests $850 million in AMOLED production, ships over 30 million PMOLED displays 2005: China s first PMOLED production line is completed 93

94 2005: Pioneer withdraws from the AMOLED market 2005: CDT prints a 14 P-OLED display using an inkjet printer 2006: BenQ announces the world s first AMOLED phone: The S88, with a 2 display made by AUO. Later in 2006 AUO stops making AMOLEDs, focuses on LCDs 2007: Sumitomo acquires CDT for $285 million 2007: CMEL starts sampling AMOLED panels 2007: Sony introduces the world s first OLED TV, the 11 XEL-11, sells for $1,800 in Japan 2008: CMEL starts producing 7.6" AMOLED panels, Kodak offers a digital photo frame that uses those panels 2008: Samsung starts AMOLED mass production, AMOLED products (cameras, phones, etc.) start shipping 2008: GE demonstrates world's first Roll-to-Roll manufactured OLED lighting panel 2008: OSRAM shows the world's first OLED lamp. Makes only 25 units only and sells each for 25, : AUO resumes AMOLED research 2008: Universal Displays developed a white OLED that features 100 lm/w efficiency 2008: Samsung announces a major investment in OLED production ($530 million) 2008: Samsung SDI and Samsung Electronics join forces on OLED, establish new subsidiary called Samsung Mobile Displays (SMD) 2008: Nokia announces their first AMOLED mass market phone (the N85) 2008: Universal Display shows a new flexible OLED that is less than 50 micrometer thick 2008: GE stops making incandescent light bulbs and focus on LEDs and OLEDs 2009: Several OLED phones and cameras announced, including the Samsung Omnia HD (3.7 AMOLED), Samsung Ultra-Touch S8300 (2.8 ), Samsung Jet (3.1 ), Microsoft s Zune HD (3.3 ), Google s Nexus One phone (3.7 ) and the Nokia N86 (2.6 ). Samsung sells over 4 million Jet and Ultra Touch phones. 2009: Philips starts to offer Lumiblade OLED lighting sample panels and development kits 2009: Samsung ships over 2 million AMOLED panels in a month, fab working 24 hours a day to meet demand 2009: LG starts shipping the EL OLED TV in Korea for $2, : LG buys Kodak OLED unit 94

95 2009: OLED shipments reach $250 million in Q : OSRAM starts shipping the Orbeos OLED lighting panel 2009: CMO and TPO acquired by Innolux, the new company is called Chimei Innolux, OLED plans unclear 2010: Samsung announces the IceTouch, an MP3 player with a transparent OLED display that never shipped 2010: Lumiotec starts selling OLED lighting panels 2010: Samsung announces Super-AMOLED displays with integrated touch panels 2010: Pioneer and Mitsubishi to co-develop and market OLED lighting panels 2010: Sony stops XEL-1 OLED TV production 2010: Microsoft expects most WP7 phone to use AMOLED and designs the UI to take advantage of that 2010: Samsung commits $2.2 billion for a new Gen-5.5 AMOLED fab and starts building it. Their current OLED business is profitable and cannot meet demand. AMOLED supply problems begin, some phone makers switch back to LCD 2010: Dupont develops new OLED Printing technology, can print a 50 panel in less than 2 minutes 2010: Mitsubishi starts to ship their Diamond Vision OLED modular 100 PMOLED TVs, installs the first one at Merck s research center 2010: Nokia announces their new ClearBlack Display (CBD) technology and three new AMOLED phones 2010: TDK shows flexible and transparent PMOLED prototypes 2010: Samsung sells over 10 million Super-AMOLED Galaxy S phones in 7 months 2011: Samsung to invest $4.8 billion in OLED production in : Samsung announces the new Super AMOLED Plus display technology 2011: Sony announces the PSP2 (NGP) gaming console with a 5 touch AMOLED 2011: LG starts mass producing AMOLEDs in their new 4.5-Gen fab 2011: Sony announces 17 and 25 professional broadcasting OLED monitors 2011: Verbatim starts shipping color-tunable OLED lighting panels (VELVE) 2011: Chimei Innolux shows two new AMOLED panels, production plans unclear 2011: Universal Display raises over $250 million 95

96 2011: Panasonic and Idemitsu Kosan open a new OLED lighting JV 2011: Philips introduces the Lumiblade Plus the most efficient OLED lighting panel to date If you want a more detailed OLED history, you can find it here - Appendix F: Other emerging display technologies In this appendix we ll detail new display technologies that might compete with or complement OLED. If you really want to understand OLEDs and what the future holds for this display technology, it s important to learn about these other technologies too. Flexible E Ink (source: LG Display) E-Paper Electronic paper (or e-paper) is a collective name for display technologies that resemble real paper - in terms of display clarity (contrast), sunlight readability, thickness and flexibility. E-Paper displays are already shipping, and the most popular e-readers (such as Amazon s Kindle and Sony e-readers) use E Ink displays. 96

97 Features Low power: an e-paper display actually uses no power when the image is not changing (it is nonvolatile, like flash memory). The display does not need to 'refresh' itself. High contrast, easy on the eye, no backlight, visible under direct light (sunlight) Flexible Thin E-Paper technologies The term e-paper is quite confusing, as actually there are several different technologies trying to achieve the same goal: a flexible, thin, sunlight-readable efficient paper-like display. Here is a list of the leading technologies around: E Ink: E Ink display technology (made by E Ink Inc.) is the current e-paper market leader. E Ink offers black and white e-paper (color is coming soon) and is used in most e-readers today (Amazon, Sony, Barnes & Noble and others) and lots of other products. Sipix: Black and white e-paper made by AUO, quite similar to E Ink. It is currently being produced and used in some e-readers. Bridgestone QR-LPD: Bridgestone's e-paper technology offers color but is otherwise pretty similar to E Ink in features. Taiwan's Delta Electronics will soon start producing 8" and 13" QR- LPD panels and e-readers based on those panels. Liquavista: Liquavista develops electrowetting color displays (where a voltage is used to modify the wetting properties of a solid material) which are very efficient and can operate in transmissive, reflective or transflective modes. Liquavista was acquired by Samsung in There are also some other technologies which offer low-power reflective displays. While these aren't really e-paper technologies, they do compete with e-paper displays for sunlight readability and power consumption: Mirasol: Qualcomm's Mirasol reflective color displays are MEMS based. Mirasol displays offer fast response time and are quite power efficient (although they do require power even when the image does not change). Small Mirasol displays are currently being produced and Qualcomm is working towards a larger fab that will produce displays suited for e-readers (5.7" and larger). Pixel Qi: Pixel-Qi offers hybrid LCD technology: you have one display that can be switched between a full-color normal LCD and a black-and-white low power reflective display (with no back light). Pixel-Qi displays can provide a great solution for laptops and tablets. Pixel Qi are already producing panels and some products (tablets) are starting to appear that use these displays. 97

98 E Ink E Ink is currently the clear leader in e-paper displays. E Ink screens are made by E Ink Inc and are used by Amazon, Sony, Samsung, Barnes & Noble and others in their e-readers products. E Ink displays are also used in mobile phones, watches and other products. Amazon Kindle 3 (source: E-Reader-Info.com) E Ink displays are electrophoretic (a science which was actually discovered back in 1807 and deals with particle motion as influenced by an electric field): they are made of tiny capsules (0.04 mm in diameter) that contain two kinds of particles: black and white. Using electricity you can choose whether the white or black particles will rise to the top of the capsule - and so change the color of the pixel. Those particles remain in place when no electricity is used - and so the displays do not need power when the image does not change. E Ink also offers color e-paper (called Triton) which uses color filters on top of the black and white display. Where can I find e-paper displays? The most popular application for e-paper displays today is an e-reader. Popular readers include Amazon's Kindle, Sony Readers and the Barnes & Noble Nook. Those e-readers feature great sunlight readability, low weight and long battery life (a few weeks usually) - all thanks to the E Ink display. Other products include mobile phones (for example, the Motorola Motofone which uses an E Ink as the main display and Samsung's Zeal and Alias phones which uses small E Ink displays on the keyboard), wrist watches, hard-disks and more. More e-paper resources and news here - Pico-projectors Pico-projectors are tiny battery-powered projectors - as small as a mobile phone or even smaller: pico-projector modules can be embedded inside phones or digital cameras. Pico-projectors are 98

99 small, but they can show large displays (sometimes up to 100"). While great for mobility and content sharing, pico-projectors offer low brightness and resolution compared to larger projectors. It is a recent innovation, but pico-projectors are already selling at a rate of about a million units a year (in 2010), and the market is expected to continue growing quickly. A pico projector (source: PicoProjector-Info.com) How do pico-projectors work? There are several companies developing and producing pico-projectors, and there are 3 major technologies: DLP, LCoS and Laser-Beam-Steering (LBS). DLP and LCoS use a white light source (which can be an LED, a diffused laser and maybe OLED in the future), and some sort of filtering technique to create a different brightness and color on each pixel: DLP (Digital Light Processing) - pioneered by TI, DLP is a chip that contains tiny mirrors that direct the light. Each mirror controls the amount of light each pixel on the target picture gets (the mirror has two states, on and off. It refreshes many times in a second - and if 50% of the times it is on, then the pixel appears at 50% the brightness). Color is achieved by a using a color wheel between the light source and the mirrors - this splits the light in red/green/blue, and each mirror controls all thee light beams for its designated pixel. LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon): an LCoS projector uses a small LCD to filter how much light each pixel gets. There are two basic designs to get color: Color-Filter (CF-LCoS) which uses 3 subpixels, each with its own color (RGB) and a Field-Sequential-Color (FSC) which uses a faster LCD and one color filter - so you split the image for the 3 main colors (RGB) sequentially and you refresh the LCD 3 times (once for each color). Laser-Beam-Steering (LBS) projectors are different, creating the image one pixel at a time using a directed laser beam. You start with 3 different lasers (Red/Green/Blue), each at its required brightness, which are combined using optics, and guided using a mirror (or two mirrors in some designs). If you scan the image fast enough (usually at over 60Hz), you do not notice this pixel-bypixel design. 99

100 Btendo laser pico-projector module (source: PicoProjector-Info.com) Microvision is currently the only company with commercialized LBS projectors, offering both standalone projectors (the Show WX Plus) and embeddable modules. There are several other companies developing their own LBS modules though. LBS has several theoretical advantages over DLP and LCoS: Focus free - the image is always focused, even on curved surfaces. A laser-based LCoS is also focus-free, by the way Low power consumption - especially since pixels that are darker require less energy, and a 'black' pixel requires no energy at all Small size There are some disadvantages to lasers, of course: Lasers are expensive Speckle: a random intensity pattern produced by the mutual interference of a set of wavefronts. It basically means that there are shiny black dots visible all over the image, (mostly visible on static images, videos suffer much less). A laser pointer also produces speckle. Eye-safety concerns Currently the major problem with laser projectors is the fact that there is no commercial 'direct' green laser, and you have to use the expensive, in-efficient and bulky frequency-modulated green laser. Direct green lasers are expected by and these should help bring the price, size and power consumption down. 100

101 Pico-Projector types There are 4 basic types of pico-projectors: Stand-alone: these receive the input via a cable (A/V, USB, etc) and need a companion device for the video signal (which can be a phone, laptop, camera, etc.). USB projector: stand alone projectors that use USB for both power and data, and so require a laptop (or tablet). These are the smallest projectors as they do not include a battery. Media-player: projectors that include on-board memory (or a memory-card slot) and can play files directly from the memory (usually photos, videos and sometimes office documents too). This is really useful for some people, but file format support and lack of convenient controls sometimes make media player projectors less useful then they could have been. Embedded projector: in this case the light-engine is embedded inside a mobile device such as a phone, camera, laptop, tablet or PDA. What's on the market today? There are many pico-projectors already available - from companies such as 3M, Philips, Samsung, Optoma, AAXA and Aiptek - ranging in price from $99 to about $400, depending on features and brand. Embedded projectors are also starting to appear, although these aren t popular yet. Samsung, LG and others already offer some projector-phones while Nikon and GE offer projector cameras. More pico-projector resources and news here - Quantum Dots A quantum dot is a tiny semiconductor crystal particle. Like an OLED, a quantum dot emits light under excitation and so can be used to make display and lighting devices. Quantum Dots were discovered in the 1980s and are being researched to be used not only as display and lighting devices, but also for transistors, solar cells and laser diodes.. The electronic characteristics of quantum dots are determined by the size (and shape) of the particle - basically it means that the color of the light is determined by the size of the quantum-dot and not the material it is made of. You need more energy to excite a smaller dot than a larger one - and more energy is released in the process, so you get a light that is closer to the blue end of the spectrum (and the larger the dot, the closer you are to the red end of the spectrum, or even further as you can make infra-red and ultra-violet dots). QLED QLED refers to a Quantum Dot LED. Indeed such a device is quite similar to an OLED, but with a Quantum-Dot layer instead of the OLED emitting layer. That s one of the advantages of this technology - the transition from OLED production can be relatively easy. 101

102 There are several companies researching QLED displays, including Samsung and LG. In February 2011 Samsung unveiled the world s first Active-Matrix QLED display - a 4 320x240 panel. Samsung actually fabricated two kinds of panels - one on glass and one on a flexible plastic. QLEDs are at an early stage of development compared to OLEDs, and while the technology has some theoretical advantages, it is less efficient, and does not last as long when compared to OLEDs - at least using today s capabilities. It is estimated that QLEDs will not be commercialized before A QLED has several advantages compared to LCDs: Richer colors: a QLED has a larger color range compared to other technologies. More efficient QLED pixels only require power when emitting light (like OLEDs). Power efficiency may even surpass OLEDs according to some people. Brightness: QLED display are bright. Very bright - in fact some suggest that QLEDs can be made about 100 times brighter than LCDs! Long lifetime: The quantum dots emitter layer is inorganic and lasts longer than OLEDs. However as the other layers in a QLED display are organic, it s not clear whether this will be true in practice. Flexibility: like OLEDs, it is possible to deposit quantum dots on flexible substrate (you can also print them using an ink-jet printer). High manufacturing cost: Quantum dots are actually quite difficult to produce, and it is estimated that making QLEDs will be more expensive than making OLEDs. Quantum Dot lighting It is possible to use a QLED to create a lighting device, which would be similar to an OLED lighting panel. However quantum dots can also be used to enhance a white LED light source. The idea is to use a thin film covered with quantum dots in front of an LED lamp. The quantum dots layer absorbs some of the blue light and emits it back as red light. This creates a more balanced color - makes it warmer and more pleasant. Such a device is also more efficient than a regular LED. A flexible QD display (source: Samsung) 102

103 A QD-LED product is actually already on the market. In March 2010 Nexxus Lighting announced the Array Quantum LED R30 light bulb which uses a quantum-dot film by QD Vision. The R30 offers warm light (2700K), 50,000 hours lifetime and is the most efficient LED light bulb on the market according to Nexxus. The R30 is selling now for a little over $100 (for a 7.8 watts lamp, equivalent to a 50 watt incandescent). Appendix G: A short introduction to 3D displays Since the groundbreaking 3D movie Avatar was released towards the end of 2009, it seems that 3D is one of the biggest hypes for displays. Virtually all TV makers now offer 3D TV models, and 3D technologies are advancing quickly. OLED TVs will be able to offer excellent 3D performance, and 3D might be a driving force towards OLED adoption. A 23 3D display (source: LG Display) There are several ways to present 3D images: Stereoscopic 3D: this is the classic way to make 3D (invented back in the 1830s). The idea is to provide a different 2D image to the left and right eye using spectacles (glasses). Autostereoscopic 3D: this is often referred to as glasses-free 3D, and indeed such technologies use optics (lenses or barriers) to direct a different image to each eye, without the need of glasses. Volumetric displays: These are actual 3D displays, which create a volume body and not a 2D image. This kind of display is still in early research, and there are several fascinating technologies that are being investigated: rotating mirrors, strong light projection, lasers and stacked panels. Stereoscopic 3D In stereoscopic 3D you use glasses to separate the image from the display to each eye. There are three common ways to do so: 103