In this week's issue:
ArcelorMittal and Novaled engaged in joint OLED development
ArcelorMittal, the world's largest quality steel maker, and Novaled have joined forces for a new OLED project. The partners are developing top-emitting OLEDs on flexible substrates
for signage and lighting purposes.
Metallic substrates offer several advantages. Compared to standard glass sheets they are more robust and durable and commonly produced by a roll-to-roll process. This production
method can be adapted to a subsequent inline process for OLED deposition which enables high throughput manufacturing with low TACT time.
In the collaboration with ArcelorMittal, Novaled is contributing both its broad technical experience with respect to highly efficient and stable OLED device architectures, as well
as its material know-how for doped transport layers.
Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth, Novaled CTO, explained, "RGB OLEDs have been processed directly on classical steel plates. The striking results showed that the Novaled technology enables
standard steel foil acting as reflective bottom electrode."
Michel Beguin, General Manager of ArcelorMittal's Industry Research Centre, said, "We consider OLEDs to be very promising. The Novaled technology gives us the advantage of an
efficient top inverted structure well adapted to our metal substrate."
| About ArcelorMittal Liège Research Centre |
|
ArcelorMittal Liège Research Centre is a unit of the ArcelorMittal Group specialising in the research and development of products and steel solutions dedicated
to the Industry market and in particular in Construction. Located in Sart-Tilman University Park, ArcelorMittal Liège Research Centre employs 100 Research Engineers
and Technicians. This centre develops new products and applications based on the use of new coatings (organic, vacuum). |
www.arcelormittal.com
www.novaled.com
UDC wins $935,000 contract for continued development of flexible
OLED display on metal foil
Universal Display Corporation (UDC) has been awarded a $935,000 contract extension by the US Army Communication Electronics Research and Development Engineering Center (CERDEC). The
extension builds on an existing grant from CERDEC for the development of flexible, AM-OLED display technology for a wrist-based communications device.
Under the contract extension development will focus on combining UDC's PHOLED™ phosphorescent OLED technology with LG.Philips LCD (LPL) amorphous-Silicon (a-Si) TFT technology. Bringing
LPL into the project as a development partner marks an important step towards the commercialisation of flexible OLED display products. In May, the two companies showcased the world's
first high-resolution AM-OLED display built on flexible metal foil at SID 2007. Building on this initial demonstration, UDC and LPL plan to work on a prototype with key design and
performance enhancements during this project.
L-3 Communications Display Systems is responsible for designing and integrating its advanced communications components with the QVGA, full-colour, flexible AM-OLED display.
www.universaldisplay.com
www.lgphilips-lcd.com
www.l-3com.com/Displays
Acrongenomics and Molecular Vision demonstrate protein measurement
on standalone diagnostic device
Acrongenomics and its research partner Molecular Vision have demonstrated a fully functional, portable medical diagnostic device using their lab-on-a-chip technology at Imperial College,
London. The demonstrator employs patented, organic semiconductor technology in a high sensitivity, handheld, medical diagnostic device.
The technology uses semiconductor films located on either side of a microfluidics chip. One film illuminates the chip, where appropriate, while the other film detects an output signal,
which is fed to a display. The demonstrated device can be implemented into three forms of detection using absorbance, chemiluminescence and fluorescence to detect different markers of interest.
The standalone two-channel, battery-powered device, complete with digital display and self-referencing capability has demonstrated its capability to measure clinically relevant markers
with high sensitivity and at low cost. In particular, the demonstrator device has been used to measure creatinine in urine at physiologically significant concentrations. The results, obtained
within seconds, were comparable to those obtained using a bench top spectrometer.
Dr Dimitris Goundis, Acrongenomics CEO, commented, "The ability to measure a protein in-situ repeatedly and accurately, in this case creatinine in urine, is a monumental achievement
for our technology and clearly demonstrates its numerous capabilities."
www.acrongen.com
www.molecularvision.co.uk
Pixdro announces the LP50 advanced R&D desktop inkjet printer
PixDro, a subsidiary of OTB-Group, has
released a new desktop inkjet printer for the development of printed electronics applications. The LP50 is a compact and low cost printer, but it is also a highly flexible and accurate print
platform with many standard integrated functions. The open system architecture of the printer enables the user to adapt it to his own requirements.
Johan Carlsson, CEO of Thin Film Electronics which is already using the LP150 printing system, said, "We expect that the newly developed LP50 will exceed the performance of the LP150
platform. With the versatile LP50 we will accelerate our development and increase our technological advantage. Our decision to choose the LP50 as our main development system is based on
OTB's documented competence on inline production systems and advanced print technology integration. Together with OTB we are convinced that the time from development to mass production will
be significantly decreased."
www.pixdro.com
www.thinfilm.se
NANOIDENT founders win Ernst & Young award
Ernst & Young have selected the founders of NANOIDENT Technologies as Austrian Entrepreneur of the Year® 2007. CEO Klaus Schroeter and CTO Franz Padinger were awarded for their
entrepreneurial vision, their readiness to assume risk, their innovative and disruptive technology, and the exemplary implementation of their entrepreneurial vision.
They will join winners from 50 countries in Monte Carlo, representing Austria to compete for the title World Entrepreneur of the Year® 2008.
Klaus Schroeter said, "This award is truly the result of a group effort; the dedication and expertise of our world-class team has allowed us to take a leadership role in the emerging
printed semiconductor industry, which is creating exciting technological possibilities for a healthier and safer world."
www.nanoident.com
Conference report: OEC-07 - Part 3
Organic Electronics Conference and Exhibition
24-26 September 2007, Frankfurt, Germany
This week we publish the third instalment of our report on the fifth Organic Electronics Conference.
Day One, afternoon sessions: Market research
The first of three presentations on market forecasts was given by Barry Young, DisplaySearch, who spoke about the third wave of the display industry, and in particular flexible
displays. Total revenues could reach $4bn by 2015 representing less that 3% of the total flat panel display market.
Lawrence Gasman, Nanomarkets, took the opportunity to discuss investment in organic and printable electronics, and how big can organic electronics get and where the biggest
opportunities in organic electronics. Lawrence suggested that for the period 2007-2014 displays and rfid would account for the largest part of the market.
The final market presentation was from Susann Reuter, IDTechEx, who looked at the overall market for printed electronics. By 2027 the market for organic and inorganic
electronics is expected to be worth $300bn. Logic and memory would account for 48% of this market, with lighting, billboard, posters, signage and displays for consumer products and packaging
accounting for 36%, and the final 16% assigned to Other.
Chris Williams presented an introduction to the UK Display and Lighting Network. This government funded initiatives aims to provide support to the display and lighting communities
in the UK. The network also provides support to the organic electronics communities. In total 518 companies and 90 academic institutes are members. The networks provides technology workshops, seminars,
road-mapping activities, training courses and an open access test lab.
Day One, afternoon sessions: OTFT : backplanes
Jiro Kasahara, Sony, presented organic TFT development for flexible full-colour display applications. Jiro say that organic transistors have a number of advantages - low temperature
processing, solution -processible and material versatility. In May 2007 Sony successfully demonstrated a 2.5 inch AMOLED driven by OTFTs. Sony has worked on planar OLED and OTFT device architectures,
but now are seeking to build vertical device architecture - with OLED on top of the OTFT device.
Next was Edzer Huitema, Polymer Vision, who spoke about the latest developments in launching their rollable displays for mobile devices. 1st generation devices will be 5-inch QVGA
16-level greyscale displays. According to Edzer standard AMLCD manufacturing equipment can be used for fabrication.
Dai Nippon Printing gave the next presentation, and Hiroki Maeda provided an update on the company's progress toward active-matrix backplane with printed OTFT. Hiroki said that a new
class of materials was necessary to fabricate a good OTFT. The suggestion was the development of a liquid crystalline organic semiconductor based on thiophene oligomers. Hiroki then presented progress
with OTFT performance and showed OTFT based displays printed using photo-assisted screen printing.
Thomas Kugler, Seiko Epson, spoke about the company's work on inkjet printed electrolyte-gated thin film transistors. Thomas said this novel approach has enabled the development of
transistors that have low gate voltage, and are high on current.
Day One, afternoon sessions: sensors/memory/batteries
Toshihide Kamata, AIST, presented on the topic of "printed organic semiconductor sensor for agricultural cultivation control". Toshihide said that are developing organic semiconductor based sensors to monitor the growing conditions of plants. The results achieved so far are encouraging, and they show similar results to that achieved via standard porometer sensors.
Nicklas Johansson, Thin Film Electronics, spoke about the companies approach to printed memory. TFE has a long history in developing high-density and hybrid silicon/polymer based memories. More recently TFE has begun prototyping all printed polymer memories. These small memory devices (15+ bits) have been used to demonstrate a range of novel applications such as card games, brand protection and as simple memory.
As a comparison George Ghenciu, Nantero, presented memory devices based on carbon nanotubes, and capable of storing many mega bytes of data. George continued the presentation describing the performance characteristics of the company's carbon nanotube technology and outlined additional suitable applications - such as bio-sensors, touch screens, ITO replacement and electronics circuits etc.
The final presentation for day one was from Martin Krebs, Varta Microbattery, who spoke about the company's range of thin and printed batteries. The company offers a range of conventional battery solution, but also have an interesting approach to an all printed battery.
A further instalment of the OEC-07 conference report will be published in next week's newsletter.
www.oec-europe.com
Organic semiconductor industry market watch
Week ending 19 October 2007
Luxell priced in Canadian Dollars, Thin Film Electronics priced in Norwegian Kroner
www.nasdaq.com
www.otcbb.com
www.londonstockexchange.com
www.tsx.com
otc.nfmf.no
