This week scientist from the University of Toronto announced the development of a new production process for OLED panels. OLED are the next generation display that will replace Plasma and LCD TV‘s. While they are prohibitively expensive at the moment new advancements are changing this more every day. Many of the best mobile phone screens on the market are OLED with the Samsung display really popping due to OLED’s nature. Even current OLED screens are brighter with better colours than LCD, deep blacks and more vibrant colours. With new developments every day OLED’s time to shine is nearly here.
The developments involve a process that deposits a single-atom thick layer of chlorine onto a sheet of indium tin oxide. This layer replaces 2 to 3 layers that would be required with the old process, reducing the total number of layers required to make the OLED panel from 6 layer to 3. By reducing the number of layers each panel becomes cheaper to produce. The new design of the new OLED panel also has the advantage of being twice as efficient as previous OLEDs. “Our Cl-ITO eliminates the need for several stacked layers found in traditional OLEDs, reducing the number of manufacturing steps and equipment, which ultimately cuts down on the costs associated with setting up a production line,” says the University of Toronto’s Professor Zheng-Hong Lu, who led the research.
While this breakthrough alone won’t change the market there have been a number of other breakthroughs that should help things along. DuPont has developed long life OLED materials and a printing process that promises larger cheaper displays. Konika Minolta has developed white OLED for lighting, it’s reported to have a brightness of 1,000 cd/m2, much brighter than most LCD monitors that rate at 300cd/m2. KAIST (formerly the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) has announced a breakthrough that improves efficiency by 75%.
TV screens aren’t the only gadgets that will benefit from these developments. LED lighting is all the rage at the moment but the prices are still high, OLED will be visually the same current LED lights but be much cheaper. Watches and all small screen devices will shift to OLED as the prices continue to drop.
The day of the OLED TV is fast approaching, new technology advancements are improving the picture and cost all the time. The LCD or LED TV will be with us for a long time yet but the pure beauty of an ultra thin OLED will win hearts.
Pictures courtesy of Gizmag
