If OLED/PLED is "dead" someone forgot to tell Kodak, GE, Phillips and a
few other companies that just made announcements of new partnerships and
licensing agreements and new materials within the last week.
DLP cannot replace the many potential applications of OLED (organic LED,
now being refereed to as PLED - Polymer LED), and I somehow don't
believe OLED/PLED is dead. The principal problems with PLED were the
lifespan of the blue source, and of course, continuing patent issues
with Kodak who owns the process and is requiring licensing.
One problem has been resolved; the previous 1000 hour lifespan of the
blue polymer was increased to 70,000 hours by 2004). PLED has so many
advantages over DLP. DLP requires some type of box or container, and a
rear projection system. The simple version with one chip reminds me of
my brother's first project at making a color TV out of a B&W back in the
late '50s, by using a rotating color wheel and separated color component
illumination from the screen which coordinated with the wheel spinning.
It's a bit Rube Goldberg.
PLED is the ultimate in versatility. It can be mass produced by
printing (using basically an inkjet printer!) onto any size substrate,
including flexible and curved ones. It can provide it's own light in
dark setting, and can use a reflective backing surface for daylight
where it would require almost no power consumption, and look like paper.
There are no mechanically moving parts, it is cheap to make, and it can
be made whatever size required, and has no backlighting required (the
big issue with the CCFT light sources you spoke about for LCD screens).
It has more saturated color, better contrast and no noise involved in
its use, unlike DLP. It h as a 180 degree viewing angle, and has about
a 1000 times faster response time than LCD, and this is not effected by
temperature. It's one limitation to date is the color gamut which is
still limited to about 80% of NTSC color. Of course that was a few
weeks ago, and literally new announcements are coming out daily now,
including a new tunable blue to white OLED by Osram which may change
that 80% number again. The literal flexibility of the technology and
it's very low power consumption will make it a very desirable display
medium.
Imagine going to a store and ordering your screen by the dimensions you
need, picking the substrate you want, and having it made in the rear for
you, or cut to size from a roll, and edge connected, and take it home to
put up on your wall, or frame, or whatever. Rather than a projection
video source, the screen you unroll will be the display itself!
And this stuff will be so cheap enough eventually that you will be
seeing floors, walls, even cold cereal boxes displaying moving video on
them. The grocery store isles will be lined with displays of products
that run ads on their boxes. Yes, it will drive us all crazy and we
will all go to shop with virtual goggles on to avoid the ads, but the
potential for this material is so much greater than something like DLP,
that OLED, or something coming from it "has" to find its place in the
market.
The two concepts just are not in the same league when it comes to
versatility.
Here's one press release a year old:
TANJEONG, Korea – January 4, 2005 – Samsung Electronics, the leader in
TFT-LCD technology, announced today that it developed the largest
single-panel active matrix-based (AM) Organic Light-Emitting Diode
(OLED) display.
At 21-inches, this OLED features the highest resolution at 6.22 million
pixels (WUXGA: wide ultra-extended graphics array). In addition, the
company adopted AM-based technology for its low power consumption and
high-resolution qualities.
Samsung's new OLED offers brightness of 400 nit, contrast ratio of
5000:1, color gamut of 75 percent and fast response times, making the
product ideal for viewing HD-resolution video images.
Moreover, the OLED uses Amorphous Silicon (a-Si) technology; thus can be
mass-produced within Samsung's existing TFT-LCD lines. Samsung
Electronics has now applied the a-Si technology to produce large-sized
OLED panels within 4 th and 5 th generation production lines.
“With the development of the world's largest OLED at WUXGA resolution,
Samsung has achieved a technological advantage and is positioned well to
be a leader in the large-sized OLED for the TV market,” said Jun-Hyung
Souk, senior vice president of the LCD R&D Center.
====================
Here's some more on the technology:
PLEDs are semi-conducting materials that can emit any part of the full
spectrum of light when electrically stimulated. The light produced is
dependent on the precise chemical composition of the polymer. Polymer
OLEDs are an advanced form of Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) in
that they are solution-processable and can be applied in solution using
ink jet printing, resulting in fast, cost effective manufacture.
This property also makes PLED technology highly scaleable – perfect for
the move towards large panel TV displays.
Products incorporating PLED displays are expected to offer distinct
advantages over other display solutions such as thinner and more compact
displays, with significantly higher contrast and brightness.
PLEDs emit their own light, eliminating the space, weight and power
consumption required by backlights in LCDs. PLEDs also offer more
vibrant, high contrast images and a wide viewing angle approaching 180
degrees.
PLEDs have a very fast response time that does not change with
temperature – typically a thousand times faster than LCDs – making PLEDs
ideal for fast moving video display applications. Their durability
should make them a good choice in the automotive, military and medical
industries where high performance is essential.
In the long run, PLEDs are expected to have a 20 - 40 per cent cost
advantage over LCDs. The simple structure of a PLED display
significantly reduces the cost of materials and manufacturing tools.
PLED’s adaptability to a variety of patterning techniques and
manufacturing processes allow for further cost savings.
Analysts have predicted that the market for PLED displays will reach
$3billion by 2008.
Given the dramatic improvements in lifetime and efficiency, PLED
technology is increasingly looking destined to spearhead the next
generation of displays and lighting applications.
=================
No, I think the rumors of OLED's death have been "greatly
exaggerated" to use a Mark Twain comment.
If you want to read about the latest with OLED/PLED check out:
Art
lists wrote:
> OLED seems to be a dead product. I haven't seen one in years. Sony is
> doing a rip off on LCOS (liquid crystal on silicon). This scheme gets
> rids of the screen door effect in LCDs by packing the pixels closer
> together. However, DLP does that already.
>
> If I had a horse in this race, it would be on DLP.
>
> Once the LED driven DLP becomes the norm, this will be the winning
> technology.
>
> Sam McCandless wrote:
>
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