A fish out of water at the OLED summit 2019

Another niche implementation is the use of red OLED in car taillights. Audi spoke to the success they have seen in this implementation in two of their models, which they hope to expand in the near future. Again, here the major benefit is the new design/look that can be achieved with OLEDs that are difficult to do with LEDs. While current designs are fairly simple and contain an array of <10 OLED pixels, future design options are really exciting, including a larger array of dozens of small triangular shaped OLEDs so that the tail lights can be a “display” of sorts. In this strategy tail lights could share information like a caution triangle, or various patterns to alert other drivers the vehicle is in autonomous mode. Audi claims the demand was way higher than anticipated for these taillights, so they had to up their capacity and find new OLED suppliers to meet the demand. Boeing presented a unique future in which a plane had no windows, only OLED illuminated sky above the passengers, complete with clouds and sun, or a starscape at night. There are various other implementations of OLED lighting and displays in planes, but I thought the windowless airplane was the most unique. And apparently there are real implications in fuel economy and weight if customers will tolerate the lack of natural light and are willing to forego the view of our planet from 30,000 ft. Not sure I’m ready to fly in a black box yet. All of the very unique (but low volume) applications tells me that OLED lighting is starting to find it’s niche, but has yet to discover the “killer app” for this technology. OLED displays found this in mobile a few years back, and now is commonplace in our pockets. But I’m guessing very few of us see an OLED lighting module on a regular basis (unless you drive an expensive Audi). 4. QLED and OLED continue to collide The OLED Summit invited two (potentially) competing technologies to the conference - QDs and microLED. From the micro LED side Plessy shared their progress on monolithic microLED displays. They rely on QDs to achieve full color using blue microLEDs. In a workshop that preceded the conference, I spoke about the trends in electroluminescent QLED (EL-QLED) as well as unique photomedical applications of QLEDs and OLEDs. The team at Fraunhofer IAP shared some of their progress and challenges in realizing Cd-free EL-QLED. Nanosys presented their work with LG on EL-QLED. They continue to improve performance and should catch the attention of those working on OLED printed displays. High efficiencies (>>10%), excellent color purity (now commonplace for QD technology), and consistently improving stability were some of the highlights. A special highlight for me was the progress in blue EL-QLED devices. Only a year ago there was virtually no Cd-free blue EL-QLED data available, and now lifetimes >100 hours are being reported with Cd-free blue QLEDs at 450 nm and peak widths <30 nm. Although it was not a focus of any presentations, QD-OLED was mentioned by many speakers and in many networking discussions. Rumors about this approach have been floating around for years but the challenges in full blue conversion, blue OLED lifetime, and light management have resulted in delays to commercialization. I wrote on this topic in a past DD article found here. Summary OLED technology continues to impress customers with its excellent black levels, thin form factor, and flexibility. There are a lot of innovations still to come out of this community but leveraging the advantages of QDs could be key to realizing displays of the future. Thanks for welcoming this fish to your pond OLED community, I look forward to next year’s event!