Last November we noted that Universal Display (OLED) had filed applications for two new trademarks. UDC has many trademarks, some of which are obvious, such as “PHOLED” (Phosphorescent OLED), or “UDC Ventures” for the VC subsidiary the company formed last May, but we singled out two trademarks, “Plasmon PHOLED” and “PlasmonLED” as a bit more unusual. A few months back, UDC researchers published a paper, “Plasmonic enhancement of stability and brightness in organic light-emitting devices” which indicated how a build-up of quasi-particles and charges over time cause an OLED display to age or ‘burn-in’, a well-known issue for OLED displays and one that is a source of considerable negative marketing from other display technologies.
The UDC team created what they called a Nanopatch antenna, not because it has anything to do with broadcasting or receiving signals of any king, but because the particles they added to the OLED stack act like an antenna, pulling out those ‘light particles’ that normally would build up and cause the OLED materials to ‘age’ inconsistently, causing the dread ‘burn-in’. By attracting these plasmons with a combination of a typical phosphorescent emitter, what we believe is a TADF host material, and the silver nanoparticles, UDC researchers were able to both double the stability of the stack at the same brightness and increased the light output by 16%, a number to remember.
This would be considered very exciting news if you were an organic material scientist, but what relevance does it have to the world of consumer electronics? Yesterday Samsung Display (pvt), the OLED display producer for parent Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and a variety of other customers, announced that it will be (actually already has) introducing a new low-power OLED display that uses a new material to reduce power consumption by (wait for it….) 16%. While SDC gives very little information about the product specifically, they do note that it can emit ‘brighter light with less energy, which can improve the usage time of smartphones…’ It seems they do not want to give away much more information on the new display and materials, which has already been used in the display of the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, which has been announced but not released until 1/29/21.
While we cannot be sure that the new UDC stack materials are the basis for this new SDC display, however as SDC’s only OLED phosphorescent OLED emitter material supplier, we would expect SDC would be fully aware of the strides that UDC has made toward Plasmon harvesting, and from UDC’s perspective, updating emitter stack materials resets the emitter volume price reductions that occur as SDC’s cumulative emitter usage increases. We could be wrong and SDC could be doing something completely different from UDC’s application, but it seems to pass the duck test so far. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck…
The UDC team created what they called a Nanopatch antenna, not because it has anything to do with broadcasting or receiving signals of any king, but because the particles they added to the OLED stack act like an antenna, pulling out those ‘light particles’ that normally would build up and cause the OLED materials to ‘age’ inconsistently, causing the dread ‘burn-in’. By attracting these plasmons with a combination of a typical phosphorescent emitter, what we believe is a TADF host material, and the silver nanoparticles, UDC researchers were able to both double the stability of the stack at the same brightness and increased the light output by 16%, a number to remember.
This would be considered very exciting news if you were an organic material scientist, but what relevance does it have to the world of consumer electronics? Yesterday Samsung Display (pvt), the OLED display producer for parent Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and a variety of other customers, announced that it will be (actually already has) introducing a new low-power OLED display that uses a new material to reduce power consumption by (wait for it….) 16%. While SDC gives very little information about the product specifically, they do note that it can emit ‘brighter light with less energy, which can improve the usage time of smartphones…’ It seems they do not want to give away much more information on the new display and materials, which has already been used in the display of the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, which has been announced but not released until 1/29/21.
While we cannot be sure that the new UDC stack materials are the basis for this new SDC display, however as SDC’s only OLED phosphorescent OLED emitter material supplier, we would expect SDC would be fully aware of the strides that UDC has made toward Plasmon harvesting, and from UDC’s perspective, updating emitter stack materials resets the emitter volume price reductions that occur as SDC’s cumulative emitter usage increases. We could be wrong and SDC could be doing something completely different from UDC’s application, but it seems to pass the duck test so far. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck…
- Nanocube Plasmon Antenna Structure - Source: Physics.org
3D schematic of Plasmon NPA - the host and emitter structure, and micrograph of the silver nanocubes - Source: Nature, doi: 10-1038/s41586-020-2684 – z
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