UDC to Show OVJP Demo at SID
Universal Display (OLED) indicated that they will be showing, for the first time, a demo of their OVJP (Organic Vapor Jet Printing Systems), which the company has had in development for a number of years. Based on a series of patents developed by the University of Michigan, University of Southern California, and Princeton University, with whom UDC has IP sharing agreements, particularly with work done by Dr. Mark E. Thompson and Professor Stephen Forrest, early OLED researchers. OVJP differs from more typical OLED material deposition methods which use fine metal masks, essentially screens, to pattern OLED materials. OVJP heats the materials into a vapor, mixes the material with a carrier gas, and sends it to a print head that precisely places the material.
As opposed to ink-jet printing, which mixes the OLED materials with a solvent, OVJP uses existing vaporization technology and direct printing, but does not liquify the OLED material, nor mix it with a solvent. OLED materials that are miscible in solvents have different characteristics than immiscible OLED materials, which means formulations must be tailored to IJP systems, while OVJP can use the same OLED material sources as current mask-based deposition systems. While the idea of OVJP has been around for some time, it has never been commercially developed until Universal Display took up the cause officially in 2014 when it created OVJP Corp. to design and build a commercial OVJP system.
OVJP is run by Jeff Hawthorne, former CEO of Photon Dynamics, a producer of automated inspection equipment for the display space that was acquired by Orbotech for $290, who was later purchased by KLA-Tencor (KLAC). Company is still in the early stages of OVJP development, with the development of modules that will eventually become an alpha system, but the company will show its first 200mm x 500mm OVJP demo on a glass substrate, along with a 7-layer mono-color phosphorescent OLED device that was made-up on an OVJP R&D system, which will point to ‘proof-of-concept’ for the process. The next step in OVJP development will be assembling an alpha system of size, likely about 6x the surface area of the current demo, and eventually scaling the system to commercial production sizes.
As the OVJP concept is one that is based on two existing technologies, it is not a far-fetched concept and essentially takes the best parts of both. However there is substantial engineering involved and considerable competition from other deposition technologies and alternative materials, which are also in development. The risk to UDC on OVJP is that other developments obviate the need for OVJP before it is commercially viable, so time is certainly a factor in its development, but the demos being shown by UDC do indicate progress is being made which is certainly encouraging.
As opposed to ink-jet printing, which mixes the OLED materials with a solvent, OVJP uses existing vaporization technology and direct printing, but does not liquify the OLED material, nor mix it with a solvent. OLED materials that are miscible in solvents have different characteristics than immiscible OLED materials, which means formulations must be tailored to IJP systems, while OVJP can use the same OLED material sources as current mask-based deposition systems. While the idea of OVJP has been around for some time, it has never been commercially developed until Universal Display took up the cause officially in 2014 when it created OVJP Corp. to design and build a commercial OVJP system.
OVJP is run by Jeff Hawthorne, former CEO of Photon Dynamics, a producer of automated inspection equipment for the display space that was acquired by Orbotech for $290, who was later purchased by KLA-Tencor (KLAC). Company is still in the early stages of OVJP development, with the development of modules that will eventually become an alpha system, but the company will show its first 200mm x 500mm OVJP demo on a glass substrate, along with a 7-layer mono-color phosphorescent OLED device that was made-up on an OVJP R&D system, which will point to ‘proof-of-concept’ for the process. The next step in OVJP development will be assembling an alpha system of size, likely about 6x the surface area of the current demo, and eventually scaling the system to commercial production sizes.
As the OVJP concept is one that is based on two existing technologies, it is not a far-fetched concept and essentially takes the best parts of both. However there is substantial engineering involved and considerable competition from other deposition technologies and alternative materials, which are also in development. The risk to UDC on OVJP is that other developments obviate the need for OVJP before it is commercially viable, so time is certainly a factor in its development, but the demos being shown by UDC do indicate progress is being made which is certainly encouraging.
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