Japanese boffin boasts electrospray OLEDs

As cheap/expensive as newspapers

By Rik Myslewski • Get more from this author

31st August 2009 22:18 GMT

Displays created using self-illuminating organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology "could be manufactured as inexpensively as printing newspapers," according to one of the researchers involved in developing the new manufacturing process.

As reported in Nanowerk, one Yutaka Yamagata of the Japanese research center, RIKEN, also claims that the new method will also result in displays with better performance than current OLED-based displays.

The new method uses an electrospray-deposited polymer films rather than the spin-coated films used in today's OLEDs, which allows the resulting display to be smoother, and each pixel on it to have a higher intensity, even at lower voltages.

An abstract of the paper, "Thin-Film Fabrication Method for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Using Electrospray Deposition," can be found here, along with a link to purchase the full paper for $49.95.

Although "as inexpensively as printing newspapers" may sound wonderfully cheap, the infrastructure required for printing the daily news is pricey indeed.

That said, this development - if it pans out, and if mass-manufacturing techniques could be developed cost-effectively - could be another step toward the all-OLED future that has been "just around the corner" for a disappointingly long time. ®