Overview of OLED Display Technology

Homer Antoniadis, Ph.D.

Product Development Group Manager
phone: (408) 456-4004
cell: (408) 314-6460
email: homer.antoniadis@osram-os.com

Homer Antoniadis | OLED Product Development|

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 Outline

! OLED device structure and operation

! OLED materials (polymers and small molecules)
! Evolution of OLED performance
! OLED process and fabrication technologies
! Color capabilities
! White emitting OLEDs
! Passive and active matrix driving schemes
! OLED market potential
! Products and demonstrators
Homer Antoniadis | OLED Product Development|
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 OLED Display and Pixel Structure

Display Pixel

Cover glass

Cathode
Cathode (Ba,Ca/Al 2000 Å)
Emissive polymer layer
Emissive polymer layer
~ 800 Å

Conducting Conducting polymer layer

polymer layer ~ 1200 Å

Epoxy Anode (ITO 1500 Å)

Anode
Single pixel structure

Glass substrate

Human hair is 200X the thickness of the OLED layers

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 OLED Device Operation Principles

OLEDs rely on organic materials (polymers or small

molecules) that give off light when tweaked with an
electrical current
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Cathode ! Electrons injected from cathode
Emissive polymer
_+ _+ _ _ ! Holes injected from anode
V ! Transport and radiative recombination of electron hole
+ + + pairs at the emissive polymer
Conducting polymer

+ + + + + ++ +
Anode +
OLED device operation (energy diagram)
Conducting Cathode-
Emissive polymer
Transparent polymer layer (s)
light substrate
Anode
(ITO)
LUMO e
- -
e

LUMO

Light HOMO
h+ h+
HOMO
h+
ca. 100 nm 10 - >100 nm <100 nm >100 nm

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 Optoelectronic Device Characteristics
Luminance-Current-Voltage Efficiency-Luminance-Voltage
10
0
12 12
-1
10 10
Current Density (A/cm )
2

10

Efficiency (cd/A)
-2
10

Efficiency (cd/A)
8
10
-3
8
-4 6
10
6
10
-5
4

10
-6 4
2
-7
10
2 0
-8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 100 1000 10000 0 2 4 6 8
2
Voltage (Volts) Luminance (cd/m ) Voltage (V)
5
10

4
LUMINANCE is the luminous intensity per unit
10
area projected in a given direction
Luminance (cd/m )
2

3
10
The SI unit is the candela per square meter
10
2
(cd/m2), which is still sometimes called a nit
1
10
The footlambert (fL) is also in common use:
10
0
1 fL = 3.426 cd/m2
-1
10 http://www.resuba.com/wa3dsp/light/lumin.html
0 2 4 6 8
Voltage (Volts)

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 Evolution of LED Performance

SM OLED

Polymer
OLED

Courtesy of Agilent Technologies

Homer Antoniadis | OLED Product Development|

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 Electroluminescent Polymers

Conducting polymers
! Polyaniline (PANI:PSS) NH

! Polyethylenedioxythiophene
(PDOT:PSS) PANI PDOT PSS

Emissive polymers
R1
! Polyphenylenevinylene
(R-PPV)
! Polyfluorene (PF) R1
n
n
R1 R1
R-PPV
Processed by : PF
Spin casting, Printing, Roll-to-roll web coating

IP owned by Cambridge Display Technology

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 Multiple emission colors achieved by Covion

Different emission colors can be obtained with a variety of chemical structures

300 nm 500 nm 700 nm

PPP
n

PPV
OR
CN
PT or
S
CN-PPV RO

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Multiple emission colors achieved by Dow Chemical

n
R1 R 1

PF

Homer Antoniadis | OLED Product Development|

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 Polymer OLED display fabrication steps

Deposit and pattern anode (ITO)

Pattern polymer layers

(first conducting then emissive)
Spin coating
Ink Jet printing
Screen printing
Web coating

Vacuum deposit and pattern cathode (Ba,Ca/Al)

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 Ink Jet Printing to Pattern Polymers
(Full Color Applications)

Ink Jet Head

Red Green Blue

emitter emitter emitter

Substrate

Ink Jet printing to define and pattern R, G, B emitting subpixels

Homer Antoniadis | OLED Product Development|

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 The Holy Grail: Flexible OLEDs

Sheila Kennedy, Harvard Univ., 1999

Homer Antoniadis | OLED Product Development|

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 Electroluminescent Small Molecules

Hole transport small molecules

! Metal-phthalocyanines N N
! Arylamines, starburst amines
NPD

Emissive small molecules

! Metal chelates, distyrylbenzenes N
O
! Fluorescent dyes N Al O
O
N

Processed and deposited by :

thermal evaporation in vacuum Alq3

IP owned by Eastman Kodak

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Polymer and Small Molecule Device Structures

Small molecule Polymer

Cathode - LiF/Al Cathode – Ba, Ca/Al

ETL - Alq3
ETL - PPV, PF
EML - doped Alq3

HTL - NPB HIL - PDOT, Pani

HIL - CuPc
Anode - ITO Anode - ITO
Substrate - glass Substrate - glass

Multi-layer structure Bilayer structure

made all in vacuum made from solution

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 Full color patterning with small molecules

substrate
R emission layer Cathode separator Shadow mask

ITO

G emission layer Shadow mask

ITO
NPD Alq3

B emission layer Shadow mask

ITO

Small molecules are thermally

R, G, B pattering is defined by
evaporated in vacuum shadow masking in vacuum

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White emitting small molecule OLEDs

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 Phosphorescent small molecule OLEDs

PHOLED technology offers significant room for further performance advances

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 The Head-Start of Small Molecule OLEDs

! Manufacturing started
! Pioneer 1997
! TDK (Alpine, 2001)
! Samsung-NEC Mobile Display (SNMD) (2002)
! RiTdisplay (2003)
! Sanyo-Kodak (2003)

! R, G, B colors available
! limited lifetimes for blue

! Shadow masking allows easy patterning for area color

! presents challenges with scalability and high volume manufacturing

! Shadow masking challenging for full color

! high throughput and scalability is a challenge

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 Advantages of Solution Processing
(Polymer) OLEDs

! Lower fabrication cost

! fewer vacuum deposition steps - lower capital cost
! advantageous materials usage and scalability (I/J printing)

! Solution processing techniques

! compatible with printing techniques
- lower cost for full color
! scalable to very large substrates (high volume manufacturing)
! better mechanical integrity
! compatible with roll process for flex manufacturing

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 Full-color/Multi-color Approaches

RGB- polymer emitters Color filters Color Changing Media

White emitter (CCMs)

Advantages: Advantages: Advantages:

- power efficient - well-established technology (LCD) homogeneous aging of emitter (?)
- lower production cost - no patterning of emitter necessary more efficient than filters
- mature ITO technology - homogeneous aging of emitter (?) no patterning of emitter necessary

Disadvantages: Disadvantages:
Disadvantages:
- power inefficient ITO Sputtering on CCMs
- emitters have to be optimized
stable blue emitter necessary
separately (common cathode?) - ITO sputtering on filters
aging of CCMs
- differential aging of emitters - efficient white emitter necessary
- patterning of emitters necessary

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Obtaining a Full Color OLED Display

1.0

EL Intensity (normalized)
0.8
0.6

0.4

0.2
0.0
Green polymer 400 450 500 550 600 650 700 750
Wavelength (nm)
AM TFT screen
Red polymer Ink Jet printing of R,G,B emissive polymers
defines the R,G,B subpixels
(xR, yR) (xG, yG) (xB, yB)
Blue polymer

R G B

Single pixel

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 Passive Matrix Addressing

Output Current

Output Current

Output Current

Output Current

Output Current

Output Current

Courtesy of Philips Electronics

• Line by line multiplex scanning

• Duration of addressing is 1/mux rate

• Pixel pulsed luminance = mux rate times average luminance

• if 64 rows then pixel L=6400 nits for an average of 100 nits

• Limited addressed lines

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 Passive Matrix Addressing

Output Current

Output Current

Output Current

Output Current

Output Current

Output Current

• Line by line multiplex scanning Courtesy of Philips Electronics

• Duration of addressing is 1/mux rate

• Pixel pulsed luminance = mux rate times average luminance

• if 64 rows then pixel L=6400 nits for an average of 100 nits

• Limited addressed lines

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 Active Matrix Addressing

light

• Place a switching TFT at each pixel

• Selected pixel stays on until next refresh
cycle (pixels are switched and shine
continuously)
• Common cathode
• Unlimited addressed lines

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 OLED Market will show strong growth

Worldwide OLED Market, 2000-2006 Flat panel market 2006 $57B

Value (Mio $) Thsd. units
$3,500 250,000

Other
value: iSuppli value: DisplaySearch
$3,000 3%
units: iSupply units: DisplaySearch 200,000
TFT LCD
$2,500
PDP 75%
12%
150,000
$2,000

OLED
$1,500
100,000 4%
PM LCD
$1,000
6%
50,000
Other:
$500
VFD: vacuum fluorescent display
EL: electroluminescence
DLP: Digital Light Processing
$0 0
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 source: iSupply/SRI 2002, Display Search 2002

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 Small Molecule Area Color Passive Matrix Displays

Motorola (by Appeal) Samsung Electronics

Examples of Wireless Products

With Kodak Display Technology

Lucky Goldstar (LG)

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 Small Molecule Full Color Passive Matrix Displays
Caller ID Subdisplays

Samsung Electronics Fujitsu F505i GPS

96x64 Full Color PM Display
Kodak Licensed SNMD to Manufacture PM OLED Displays
With Pioneer Full Color (4,096 colors)
PHOLED 1.1-inch 96x72 pixels display.
Phosphorescent material developed by
Universal Display Corp.

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 Small Molecule Active Matrix Display Products

Eastman Kodak: Digital camera Sanyo: Cell Phone with Digital camera

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 Kodak-Sanyo 15-in flat panel display (based on white)

15-inch HDTV format (1280x720) AM a-Si OLED display by Sanyo-Kodak

Full Color based on white OLED with Integrated Color Filters.
The two companies showed the prototype at the CEATEC JAPAN trade
show (Sep 2002).
Homer Antoniadis | OLED Product Development|
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Top Emitting Active Matrix OLED Display

Top Emission Adaptive Current Drive technology, allows OLEDs to

be larger and higher in brightness and resolution.
A 13-inch full-color AMOLED using poly-Si TFT was made where
the light emits through the transparent cathode and thus, the filling
factor does not depend on the TFT structure.

The schematic vertical structure of the device is

substrate/TFT/metal anode/organic layers/transparent
cathode/passivation layer/transparent sealing.

Display format: 800x600 (SVGA); pixel pitch 0.33x0.33mm2

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 Polymer Passive Matrix Display Products

Philips: Electrical Shaver

Delta Electronics: Display for MP3 player

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 OSRAM Pictiva™ Evaluation Kit (www.pictiva.com)

San Jose, CA – May 15, 2003 -- Osram Opto Semiconductors, a global leader of solid-state lighting devices,
today announced its Pictiva™ Evaluation Kit. Announced earlier this week, the Pictiva brand is Osram’s
suite of organic light emitting diode (OLED) technologies. Pictiva displays offer a high level of brightness and
contrast, video capabilities, wide viewing angles and a thin-profile, enabling developers and engineers to
have greater design flexibility when developing the next-generation state-of-the-art electronics products.

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