May 8, 2008 5:30 PM PDT

Dupont targets OLED display mass production

Posted by Brooke Crothers

Dupont and Dainippon Screen Manufacturing will form a strategic alliance to develop mass production techniques for organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, according to an announcement made in Japan.

Sony OLED display

(Credit: CNET)

The focus is on developing better processes and printing equipment for the fabrication of OLED displays.

OLEDs are attracting interest because the panels are paper thin but offer extremely high-quality images, superb color saturation, and fast response times. And they draw little power because they don't require a backlight.

At the same time, they face durability challenges. The organic matter used to illuminate the image can by ruined by the elements, so special sealing technology is necessary. Also, a new study by DisplaySearch found that the brightness on Sony's 11-inch XEL-1 TV began to degrade significantly after 1,000 hours.

That's not all. OLEDs face size constraints. Many of the widely-used, mass-market OLEDs used today are only between and three and four inches diagonally. Sony's XEL-1, one of the largest, is only 11 inches but is priced at close to $2,000.

Dupont and Dainippon hope to solve the size problem and bring down the cost in the process. Their goal is to develop printing equipment that that will enable the production of very large OLEDs that would rival the largest LCD TVs in size.

DuPont brings its small molecule-based OLED solution materials and process technology to the table, while Dainippon Screen has developed a nozzle printing technology.

Originally posted at Nanotech: The Circuits Blog

Brooke Crothers is a former editor-at-large at CNET News.com, has been an editor for The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, and has been an analyst at IDC. He writes for the CNET Blog Network, and is not a current employee of CNET. Contact him at brooke_crothers@msn.com. Disclosure.