I have just returned from an educational & fun trip to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. There were so many cool new products being shown with OLED displays, that it got me thinking about the "good ole days." Many years ago, in the mid-70s, you may (or may not) recall that there was a worldwide oil crisis - causing shortages of gasoline and fuel oil. This triggered a rush to invest in alternative energy and many companies began to fund R+D efforts in solar energy. (Sounds familiar, doesn't it?) A Kodak manager had a vision of coating photovoltaic structures like we coat film, in huge rolls.

These structures directly convert sunlight to electricity and with Kodak's expertise in high volume film manufacturing, he thought we could create a new industry and solve many of the energy problems we faced as a nation. Great concept! A young scientist, Ching Tang, was hired to investigate this possibility and during one of his tests, he observed light emission when electricity was passed through a test structure. Fortunately, there was great support for new concepts at Kodak and I was hired to investigate this phenomenon. Over the next several years, we invented many of the structures that form the basis of today's OLED technology, including the multi-organic layer design and the concept of forming mixed layers to control the various actions that take place within the OLED device.   

The early days were great fun, with lots of excitement at every turn. We tended to work on particular challenges for a few months (for example, lifetime improvement) and then switch to another challenge (like efficiency) when progress seemed to slow down.  As we delved deeper into the science, it was a thrill to see how all the characteristics intertwined.  

One of my fondest memories of the early years was discovering that a particular class of emitting material provided a huge increase in lifetime. One (late) night, we decided to leave our stability testing equipment on, rather than turning it off as usual. Surprise! In the morning the OLED device was still glowing brightly! This was a green device, so immediately we made some different colors to test the stability. We found the blue was not as stable, so we needed to change this material...and on and on. Great fun. Check out these pictures of my old lab and an early OLED device.





So, where are we now?  Well, full-color OLED display products are on the market but the volumes are relatively low - perhaps with worldwide revenue on the order of a few hundred million dollars. This is tiny in comparison to the entire flat panel display industry, having revenue close to $100B. This is a tremendous opportunity for OLED and all expectations are that full-color OLED displays will continue to chip away at the AMLCDs that now dominate the display market. Hopefully you are aware of the Kodak picture frame with an OLED display. This product has received several reviews praising its performance and the images displayed are incredible - crisp, clear, with wonderful color!  The frame was actually chosen as a CNET Editor's Hot Pick at CES.


 
Where are we going?  Kodak has built a valuable OLED intellectual property portfolio and all of the OLED display products on the market use Kodak technology. With the potential for lower manufacturing costs than the competition, it is expected that OLED's will continue to be found in more and more products. 

But this is not all!  OLED's are also being explored for use as solid-state lights.   



What does this mean? Well, OLEDs can be made to emit white light and the efficiency is much higher than the efficiency of standard light bulbs. With a higher efficiency, less electrical power is required to provide lighting. The ability to consider OLED lights for this application was enabled by the tremendous progress made in the efficiency of white colored OLEDs, as well as operational lifetime. And so, as Shakespeare said, the wheel has come full circle. We started out looking for a way to help the world energy problem but took a detour to displays. Now we are back to what started the whole project - using a Kodak technology to help the world energy problems!

To learn more about OLED technology and the hot new gadgets that use it, tune in to the Discovery Science Channel this Saturday night at 8pm for "CES 2009: Gamechangers!"
 

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