Joint venture to develop OLED displays

DuPont and Dainippon Screen Manufacturing have formed an alliance to develop integrated manufacturing equipment for printed organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays.

The companies have also signed an agreement to bring together the elements needed — materials, technology and equipment — to mass produce OLED displays.

OLEDs are displays in which pixels are created using thin films made of emissive organic materials. Compared with liquid crystal displays, OLEDs can have much higher contrast ratios, lower power consumption (because pixels draw power only when they are in use), faster response time and they eliminate the need for the backlight and colour filter.

Small-size active matrix OLED displays have recently become available from several manufacturers, but the current high cost of manufacturing limits market adoption and constrains OLED manufacturing for large-size displays.

"The flat panel display market is about US$100 billion annually and growing. DuPont is applying its science to make possible more vivid displays that are lower cost than current LCD displays," said David B Miller, group vice-president of the company's Electronic & Communication Technologies division.

"We are excited to combine our strengths with Dainippon Screen's printing technology to produce the core technology that will enable improved high-definition televisions and other flat panel displays."

The companies are developing integrated coating and printing equipment for fabricating OLED displays from solution, an approach which is unique in the industry and can reduce manufacturing costs for OLED displays.

DuPont brings to the alliance its small molecule-based OLED solution materials and process technology from which good performance has been obtained in testing.

Dainippon Screen has developed a printing technology, called nozzle printing, in which the OLED materials can be printed accurately at very high speed.

The goal of the alliance is to develop integrated OLED printing and coating equipment that will reduce the production costs of flat panel displays, with the aim of extending OLED technology to large-size displays and making them cost-competitive with LCDs.

The companies have been working together over the past three years to jointly develop nozzle printers as an efficient method for printing OLED displays from solution. The first production-scale printer is currently being constructed.