A display of huge versatility

Cheaper, longer-lasting and more versatile materials for high-performance flat panel displays claim to have been perfected by DuPont, which will use them to improve the manufacture of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs).

These need less power and are thinner than current LCDs, but until now it has not been possible to combine high performance and long lifetime of the materials with a printing process that costs substantially less and is more scalable to larger display sizes.

The class of OLED materials, known as 'small molecular', has long been the highest performing material technology on the market, but they can only be used with expensive manufacturing techniques in which they are evaporated in high-vacuum equipment.

Also, evaporation has proved to be very difficult to scale to the large motherglass used in flat panel displays. To overcome this problem, DuPont's development allows it to capture the advantages of small molecular materials, but use them in solution form. It has a material, DB, which is termed a 'hole injection material' and used in a layer next to the OLED's anode. It is an aqueous semi-conducting material, enabling holes to enter the diode. Several advantages are promised because the DB material is in solution form.