SEOUL, KOREA – One of the hot topics in the Consumer Electronics Show this year was the demonstration of a 55-inch AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) television by Samsung and LG. OLED displays have been in the spotlight since the early 2000s. The screens require no backlight and are therefore thinner, lighter, and capable of superior color reproduction compared to LCDs. “AMOLED displays, especially those designed for mobile display has been dominated by Korean companies, with the entire Galaxy lineup using this display. This year, however, the 55 inch TV became the most talked-about issue both at the display week of Society for Information Display and at CES. Currently, there are only two companies who can make a display this large without defects - Samsung and LG, which use different color layers of RGB OLED and White OLED, respectively,” said Byung Doo Chin, professor of Dankook University and the member of organizing committee of International Meeting on Information Display (IMID).
“Korean companies were quite successful at the initial mass production of AMOLED because of their competence in developing OLED-optimized backplane and color pattern technology. They are particularly good at large-area, fine patterning for RGB, which requires difficult processing technology, and obtained many patents for application technologies. This year, Korean companies aim to produce 200,000~250,000 55-inch OLED TVs. The display technology will continue evolving to be thinner, more highly efficient, and eventually flexible in the future,” Professor Chin said.
He continued that, “OLED also has great potential at the lighting market as it is conformable and lighter than existing LED. The U.S., European, and Japanese industries have focused on a development of OLED for the lighting application. OLED is close to natural colors, making the eyes less tired, and can affect people’s emotion and condition with a slight variance of color alteration. On top of this, as OLED is a flat light source, so that it allows diverse curvature designs. For a consumer device, it will achieve luminous efficacy even more than 100 lumen per watt in the future.”
Prof. Chin has been focusing on OLED device and patterning technology. He began his OLED career at Samsung SDI, moving to Dankook University in 2009 to continue the studies. “While businesses are developing technology for commercialization, we are focusing on developing next generation technology – for instance, developing solution processes which can save more money than conventional vacuum process or new methods for increasing light extraction efficiency of OLED.” Conventional OLEDs allow approximately 20 percent of all the light emission generated in OLED, so that improving light extraction efficiency is important.
International Meeting on Information Display
He is also serving as a general secretary of the organizing committee for the International Meeting on Information Display (IMID 2012), which will be held on August 28~31 at EXCO, Daegu in Korea. IMID is one of the three major display conferences along with the Society for Information Display (SID) in the U.S. and the International Display Workshop (IDW) in Japan. The conference will be a venue for academic, industry and business leaders to meet, publish results, and share knowledge in information display.
Various prominent professionals will participate in the conference as speakers. As one of three keynote speakers, Soo-in Cho, a president of Samsung Mobile Display will speak on the current state of the Korean OLED industry. Two other noted authorities in display sectors are from Japan and the UK. Yasuhiro Koike, a professor of Keio University, will talk about the status of photonics polymer for face-to-face communication. Henning Sirringhaus is a professor at the University of Cambridge. His presentation will focus on low-temperature, solution-processible organic and oxide semiconductors for flexible electronics.
“It is the first time we have had an exclusive meeting separate from the Korea Electronics Show, which have been held together for the last four years. This will provide an atmosphere conducive to academic and technology-based pursuit with over 2,000 participants. We have put great efforts to encourage renowned professors and research engineers to submit the presentation on the state-of-the-art technologies on display. As a result, more than 420 high quality papers – half of them from the foreign countries such as Taiwan, Japan, China, U.S., and Germany, and mainly for Active-matrix technology: oxide thin-film transistor, flexible/high efficiency OLED, Lighting, 3D, and Nanomaterials for display - were submitted. With Korean display companies – Samsung and LG – having nearly 50 percent U.S. TV market share, many presentations from industry leaders will attract great attention from worldwide participants.” This year, together with the conference, IT Convergence EXPO Korea 2012(ITCE) and International LED & Display Expo(LED+) will be held on August 29~31 at the same venue where participants can witness the latest trends and experience diverse high-technologies in the display sector.
