Cheaper Big-Screen OLEDs

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This week at the Society for Information Display (SID) Symposium, in San Antonio, DuPont is presenting OLED materials that can be printed in solution and that make longer-lasting displays. DuPont is disclosing not the composition of the materials or how they are printed. However, the lifetimes of the materials, which the company has disclosed, "are indeed impressive," says Samson Jenekhe, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. For example, the lifetime of the green material involved is more than a million hours, which DuPont says is a record. The efficiency and color purity of the materials, says Jenekhe, are comparable to those of the state-of-the-art organic displays on the market.

Vladimir Bulović, an associate professor of electrical engineering at MIT and a cofounder of QD Vision, a startup company that makes lighting and displays using quantum dots, says, "Since they aim to produce displays, the key will be to understand the deposition and pixelation method they intend to use." DuPont says that the materials are laid down using a high-speed nozzle printer developed with Dainippon Screen, a Kyoto electronics company.

Colaneri adds that, to his knowledge, no solution-printed OLED displays are currently on the market. But other companies are also trying to tackle the problem. Indeed, Sumitomo executives reported at the SID event that they have been shipping solution-printable polymers for displays. Sumitomo also recently acquired U.K. company Cambridge Display Technologies, which makes polymer-based displays. And Universal Display Corporation of Ewing, NJ, is also reporting long-lifetime green display materials at the conference.

William Feehery, global business director of DuPont OLED Displays says that DuPont is currently in discussions with several display companies interested in commercializing its new OLED materials. "They already have the manufacturing infrastructure to make these on glass," he says. The company also plans to look into making flexible displays using the technology.