Apr 27 2006
DuPont, a leader in the development of organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays -- yesterday announced a significant technology breakthrough in its OLED technology, taking a significant step toward commercialization of this next generation flat panel display offering.
Using advanced materials, OLEDs produce low power, thin, high-performance flat panel displays. OLED panels are emissive, eliminating the need for backlights and simplifying display design compared to other display technologies, such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs).
DuPont's latest technological achievement enables -- for the first time -- the combination of high performance and long lifetime of small molecule OLED materials with a printing process that is substantially lower cost and more scalable to larger display sizes than the industry incumbent processes, such as vapor deposition. Through a combination of innovative processing device architecture and new materials, DuPont has demonstrated printing of small molecule OLED materials from solution.
DuPont has achieved lifetimes of the three primary colors each exceeding 10,000 hours of white lifetime (or 40,000 hours for a typical video) at the brightnesses required for a 200 nit display. With this development, DuPont has demonstrated that OLEDs can be manufactured at high yields and low total cost.
"Our model shows that the total cost of OLEDs can be 30 percent less than LCDs," said Craig Naylor, group vice president - DuPont Electronic & Communication Technologies. "Our proprietary materials also are designed to use less power than LCDs. And OLED displays can be very thin -- less than 1mm. With this development, we expect OLEDs will become the next generation flat panel display technology."
OLEDs are starting to penetrate key applications in small displays today, including cellular phones and MP3 players. With DuPont's technology, OLEDs can compete in a larger range of products -- including PDAs, personal digital media players, industrial and consumer electronics and other applications where bright, colorful, high contrast, thin, video capable displays are required, including eventually large screen televisions.