Global OLEDS market starts to pick up

Watch a Sony demonstration of OLEDs

Beset by cost and durability problems, the OLED market has been slow to develop. But with $1bn in sales expected this year – double the 2008 figure – its fortunes are about to be reversed

OLEDS, OR organic light emitting diodes, offer lighting and display possibilities that only science-fiction film directors could have dreamt about until recently: flexible plastic sheets that light your home, wallpaper that lights up or display monitors built into clothing.

These thin strips of polymers or plastic materials have already found their way into some commercial applications, notably mobile phones, and multinationals have been pouring money into research projects to enable their mainstream use in television screens or lighting.

The advantages of OLEDs over technologies such as light-emitting diodes or liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are manifold. As well as providing brighter, crisper displays and truer colors, they use less power and, being extremely thin, they take up less space. But in addition to the excitement surrounding these benefits, there has been much talk of the problems posed by OLEDs.

Barry Young, managing director of the US-based OLED Association, a forum created to encourage the exchange of technical and market information about this technology, believes the problems, at least related to the use of OLEDs in displays, have generally been solved. He thinks the focus now should be on getting these products onto the mainstream commercial market.

“The OLED industry has been progressing forward rapidly and the commercialization of displays of 7 inches and below [is] really in that segment of OLEDs whose performance is very good,” he insists. Moreover, he says the relatively short lifetime of OLEDs “was an issue when [they] first started because the chemicals in the organic materials were immature.”

However, this is no longer a real concern, he says, with red and green color types typically having a lifespan of 100,000 hours and blues 50,000 hours. Historically, the performance of blue light-emitting materials has been the most challenging to get right. “This year we will get to 50,000-70,000 hours for a whole device,” he says. “This is good enough for every application.”

Young agrees that price remains a problem, but says that the elevated cost of OLEDs stems from the fact “the factories that build OLEDs are smaller than those that build LCDs and the latter have been around for more than 20 years, so they are fully depreciated, while the factories that build OLEDs are just starting to depreciate.”

He claims that “if it were an even match and the same factories were making OLEDs they would be cheaper [than LCDs].” And according to Young, it is the economic downturn that is to blame for the delay in factory building.

The global recession “is not having an effect on research, but it is having an effect on capacity, on the building of factories,” he says. “If there hadn’t been an economic downturn, we might have seen larger factories by 2010-2011, but we are now between one to three years behind that date.”

DOWNTURN RESISTANT
Karsten Dierksen, head of the functional films polymer electronics unit at German chemical company Bayer MaterialScience, agrees that “the economic downturn is having a major effect on existing business, but so far, interest in research and development [R&D] has not been impacted by the economic crisis.”

He states that “all potential OLED customers are always looking for new trends and technologies and that does not change, even during a financial downturn.” Proof of Bayer’s confidence in the technology is its recent technology and patent license agreement with US OLED developer Add-Vision. This means that since June, Bayer has been able to manufacture and sell flexible polymer-OLED (P-OLED) displays using Add-Vision’s technology and intellectual property portfolio.

This deal is significant, says Dierksen, because the printable P-OLED lighting technology is an “important component for many applications in the coming years – such as active packaging and labels, gift cards, electronic toys and games, promotional products or point-of-sale signage,” as it offers advantages over more conventional technology. “It is flat, flexible, designable, operates on low voltage and takes advantage of existing printing technologies,” he says.

Joining forces with other companies is also a good way of ensuring the OLED market remains as buoyant as possible in the current economic climate.

“Creating synergies, building networks, exchanging know-how with industry partners, the scientific community and academia – this interdisciplinary approach will help us in opening up new business opportunities,” claims Dierkesen.

He cites Bayer’s recent collaboration with Add-Vision as “a perfect example” of this idea in practice. Moreover, partnerships can help companies keep down the costs of producing new technology.

Last year, US chemical group DuPont formed an alliance with Dainippon Screen Manufacturing to develop the complex printers needed to produce P-OLED displays and, just as importantly “to bring together the elements needed – materials, technology and equipment – to mass produce OLED displays, delivering higher performance at a lower cost.”

LINGERING DIFFICULTIES
Dierksen admits that there are still some problems to overcome before the technology’s potential can be fully realized – “such as sufficient encapsulation and integration into a device.” But he is “optimistic we can overcome these issues quickly” and start marketing the products to a mainstream audience. “The printed P-OLED technology can be incorporated into applications at a cost that results in an end application price acceptable to the consumer,” he insists.

DuPont has also ploughed on with its OLED R&D projects and in May announced the development of a third-generation solution-based OLED technology, which it claims has led to substantial performance gains for printable OLED light-emitting materials.

Bill Feehery, global business director for DuPont OLED Displays, says that “with lifetime five times better than just two years ago, these new materials will allow solution OLEDs to be used in mobile displays, and also to begin to penetrate the television and general lighting markets at a lower cost than today’s evaporated OLED technology.”

STAYING FOCUSED
Feehery agrees with Dierksen’s assessment of the global recession. “Everybody has been affected by the economic downturn, but companies have not lessened their focus on OLEDs,” he says. “Most firms see OLEDs as key to the future.” Like his colleagues, Feehery says that display, rather than lighting, technology will be the first ready to be incorporated into mainstream commercial products. “It depends on who builds a full-scale factory and when,” he says, but estimates that “a large volume of displays should be on the market by 2011.”

Gerd Guenther, vice president of marketing and sales for Novaled, a German company specializing in the R&D and commercialization of OLEDs, suggests that the OLED display market should already be considered as mainstream, given that it is estimated it will be worth around $1bn (€715m) in revenues this year, compared with $500m in 2008. He says it is possible that lighting companies could have OLED lighting products on the market by the second or third quarter of 2010, but the “elevated price of these goods will make these not products for the mass market, but for the niche, luxury end of the market.”

Guenther agrees with his peers that “the recession has posed a little bit of a problem as big companies have had to be careful about their investments.” He estimates that the economic downturn has reduced investment in OLEDs by around 20-25%, but says that the message from multinationals now seems to be that “the bottom has been reached and there is more hope and willingness to invest.”

Guenther adds that companies know that “if they significantly cut investment now, it will be a burden for them in three to four years’ time, as they will be behind with their development of new technologies.”

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