Organic LED (OLED) - Coming to a screen near you!

In this day and age of thin plasma screens, LCD flat panel monitors, and HDTV televisons, a cutting edge new technology is promising that our screens are going to get a whole lot thinner in the near future - paper thin to be exact - and they will even be 'flexible'.

While the technology itself behind Organic Light-Emitting Diodes (OLED) is pure chemistry, the applications are much more everyday; mobile phones, television screens, laptop, PC and stereo displays, and even billboards.

The OLED technology is based on a revolutionary discovery that light-emitting, fast switching diodes could be made from polymers as well as from semiconductors. Starting from a standard LCD glass covered with structured ITO (Indium-Tin-Oxide), the polymer materials are applied by precision ink jet printing. Using this technology, pixels of red, green, and blue material are applied. After the patterned cathode has been applied via metal evaporation, the cell is sealed.

Electronics giant Philips states that the simplicity of this technology is a big advantage for the manufacturing process, fewer steps, as well as fewer materials used, will mean a huge potential to keep costs very low. Philips’ thin-film PolyLED technology will enable the production of full-color displays less than 1 mm thick. Combined with a large viewing angle, high brightness and contrast, and full video capability, PolyLED displays are ideal for the next generation of information displays.

Kodak, known for cameras and camera film, have also been hard at work on OLED, and their technology can already be found in Pioneer car audio products, as well as many Motorola and Sanyo cell phones.

Polymer LEDs have several inherent properties that afford unique possibilities, such as:

* All colors of the visible spectrum are available
* High brightness is achieved at low drive voltages/current densities
* No viewing angle dependence
* Operating lifetime exceeding 10,000 hours
* High response speeds allow display of high quality video

With ongoing research conducted by Philips as well as Kodak , the applications for OLEDs continue to expand, making it clearly the display technology of the future. Market analysts predict that OLED technology will become a 10.2 billion dollar industry by 2011.

Organic light-emitting diode Totally Explained