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Kodak introduces new OLED display materials
Dennis Hissink : May 31th 2004 - 10:28 CET
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 Continuing its pioneering role in the OLED display industry, Eastman Kodak Company is introducing new high-performance materials for the manufacture of OLED displays and demonstrating active matrix organic light emitting diode (AM OLED) display panels in new sizes and formats, expanding the range of potential uses for the technology. Kodak has developed a groundbreaking OLED formulation that includes four colours: red, green, blue, and, for the first time, white. As a result, manufacturers will have the flexibility to choose the panel architecture that best suits their device design and production needs. Kodak has demonstrated these advances at the 2004 Society for Information Display (SID) conference in Seattle.
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Kodak's new materials are ideally suited for both passive matrix and active matrix displays. The material set provides efficient red, green, and blue formulations for full-colour active matrix displays designed with a red-green-blue (RGB) array of pixels, as well as white formulations for panels designed to use a white-emitting OLED material with a colour filter array.
Manufacturers targeting the discriminating consumer's preferences for electronics devices with displays that have brilliant colour, unsurpassed contrast ratio and a wide viewing angle can take advantage of Kodak's new OLED materials to deliver these benefits in the near future.
"These new materials offer outstanding performance that draw on decades of Kodak colour science expertise and materials research," said Willy C. Shih, senior vice president, Eastman Kodak Company, and president, Display and Components Group. "Our work in materials development is complemented by advances in panel manufacture. The growing variety of form factors that are possible should inspire electronics manufacturers who want to incorporate even more impressive displays into future products."
The display modules shown at SID demonstrate Kodak's practical approach to producing a variety of panel sizes and formats. These prototypes, including the newest 3.5-inch AM OLED panel, take advantage of innovative architectures and materials to create a full-colour display that is well-suited for image- and video-centric applications such as personal video players (PVPs). The 3.5-inch display, along with 2.5-inch and 1.9-inch panels, is being shown for the first time in the United States. Kodak, along with its partner SANYO Electric Co., LTD, has demonstrated the widest range of AM OLED displays in the industry, from 1.9-inch screens to a 15-inch flat panel display prototype manufactured at SK Display, the two companies' joint manufacturing venture.
New Leadership
In response to explosive OLED market growth, Kodak has realigned its OLED Products business into two units: Display Materials and OLED Modules. Dona Flamme, general manager and vice president, Display and Components Group, will lead Display Materials (including OLED materials and optical display films); Andrew Sculley, general manager and vice president, Display and Components Group, will lead OLED Modules. The realignment is expected to help accelerate materials development and to better serve customer demand for display modules. As a result, Kodak will have dedicated teams driving these initiatives to better address our customer needs.
Research firms such as Stanford Resources and DisplaySearch predict the OLED display market could reach from $1.5 to $3 billion by 2007. Consumer electronics devices expected to incorporate OLED technology in the next five years include mobile phones, digital cameras, PDAs and DVD players. |
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