Exclusive: The Secret Sauce That Goes Into an OLED High Def TV

Click to viewUDC is one of a handful of companies pioneering OLED development and manufacture techniques for the big boys such as Samsung , Sony , LG and of course , the US Department of Defense . No one ’s written about how they make these display , panels that ’ll make up our next generation of tops - slim HDTVs , until now . This week , Benny and I visited Universal Display Corporation ’s home office in Princeton , NJ for an exclusive duty tour of the mill , where we witness just how they make ’em .

We gowned up , donned stylish hairnets and keep OLED control board fabrication up close , a cognitive process that involve expensive tops - het up dope and something called a shadow mask . ( Sounds like fairly squeamish evening in Vegas , does n’t it ? )

OLEDs ( organic Light Within - utter rectifying valve ) differ from liquid crystal display in that they do n’t ask a backlight of any kind , because each pixel is made of a phosphorescent atom that lights up on its own when excited . The joke is getting the speck onto the chalk , charge plate or metal screen — the substrate , they call it — in an orderly manner . There are a few techniques , but here ’s the canonical outgrowth :

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1 . The phosphorescent colored particles , or “ dope , ” are set up . The three colors , red , green and dismal , are actually made from powders that are cherry , yellow and orange . To this Clarence Shepard Day Jr. no one is certain why . The powder is carried in vials to the fabrication room .

2 . Meanwhile , in a Class 100 sportsmanlike room ( register in video and gallery under ultraviolet illumination protective yellow - tint looking glass ) , the substrate is prepared to be fused with the subatomic particle . I think I see a salad bar in the back , but our guide , Janice Mahon , VP of Technology Commercialization , only laughed knowingly . Intel has Class 10 light rooms , btw , but Jesus says his momma ’s theater is even clean than that .

3 . Here ’s where the magic happens : pot meets substrate in a sticky act of dearest . In the big business of OLEDs these days there are four ways to make this happen :

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• Vacuum Thermal Evaporation – This is UDC ’s tried and true proficiency , a blistering and steamy method acting involving super - heated dope that vaporise up into a grid , know as the shadow mask , that is placed over the substrate . First the cherry-red particles are evaporate , then the grid is shifted ever so slimly , then green is evaporated , then a terminal shift for puritanic . In the end , the panel has RGB pixels evenly distribute across the whole affair . Since you have to hang the shadow dissemble up under the substrate , there ’s a chance it could sag on larger projection screen , so VTE is aimed at small screens .

• Organic Vapor Phase Deposition – This is where the evaporation is heated up then streamed into a system of “ showerhead ” that wedge the particles on a cooled substratum .

• Ink - Jet Printing – If the dope can be immix into melted conformation , it can run through technology similar to the stuff inside your printer . Precise depositing of dots on a substrate is gentle , but the challenges are turn the dope into a liquid and then depositing the ripe amount in petty well on the substrate where they can dry .

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• Organic Vapor Jet Printing – It ’s what it sound like , a printing technique that lets you germinate particle through a printhead and straight onto the substrate . The benefit of this is that you do n’t have to turn the material into a liquid first , and you do n’t have to concern about getting the particles to dry out subsequently . But it ’s still really really hard .

Glass is the easiest matter to use to make organic light-emitting diode , because it is rigid and because it is not porous : moisture and O ca n’t get in and bankrupt the little glow organic molecules . Plastic is the forged , because it is easy penetrated . metallic element foil is a middle footing , because the metal side keep on the molecule untroubled , but the beam side still needs a particular finish , and wo n’t last as long as a deoxyephedrine OLED .

Like phosphor in a blood plasma TV , OLED textile fade over their life , even when tightly sealed . At this spot , red and immature last century of M of hour , so they could easily last as long as other applied science . But blue is still an issue . In any place , it ’s going to be the first to go , though some OLED panel are now being rated in the 50,000 - hour range .

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