Plastic Logic and Novaled team up for wearable display technology

PLASTIC LOGIC, the leader in the development and industrialisation of flexible organic electronics, and Novaled, a leading company in organic electronic materials and technology for OLED applications, announce a partnership which will transform and accelerate the market for flexible and wearable displays.

The companies are scheduled to demonstrate at the Flextech Conference in Phoenix, AZ a truly flexible, plastic, fully organic AMOLED display. This will be the first of a series of technology demonstrators during 2014, which will be part of each company’s development of partnerships to enable the market for truly flexible, unbreakable AMOLED displays - a market segment forecast to be worth over $10 billion by 2020 (IHS 2013 report).

The dream of wearable display technology is existing for a long time now. Making this real has needed the correct set of electronics capabilities to enable compelling and practical solutions for lifestyle, communications and fitness applications. The demonstrator heralds a breakthrough by combining for the first time a functional all-plastic AMOLED display with an industrialised turnkey manufacturing process for the backplane electronics. This marks the beginning of a new chapter for display makers searching for a path to ultra-flexible, ultra-thin, lightweight AMOLEDs, using a low temperature process which has a number of key industrial benefits, including superior uniformity, yield and hence ultimately a route to low cost solutions for volume manufacturing.

Both companies bring critical technology to the demonstration. Novaled’s PIN OLED? technology enables the use of non-standard electrode materials needed for the flexible AMOLED development. Plastic Logic’s fully industrialised plastic, flexible Organic Thin Film Transistor (OTFT) backplane and know-how enabled the world’s first fully organic, flexible display. Such truly flexible AMOLEDs, and the increased usable screen areas they make possible, are set to power the next generation of products for the wearables market, poised to take off in 2014.

Through the OTFT industrialisation process Plastic Logic has created unique IP and a highly transferable process-flow. With an entire supply chain in place, OTFT manufacturing has now reached a tipping point in performance with leading organic semiconductor (OSC) materials suppliers, including Merck whose OSC material was used in the demonstration, now showing mobilities required to drive OLED displays. The process is compatible with existing mainstream display manufacturing operations, underpinning a new technology licensing business model. Plastic Logic has already established a partner program to work with leading global display makers and consumer electronics companies to enable flexible, plastic AMOLED supply chains through licensing and technology transfer to mass volume producers.