Chapter 10

Flat Panel Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) Displays: A Case Study

Julian Carter,1 Mark Crankshaw2 and Sungjune Jung3

1Technology Consultant, United Kingdom

2R&D—Engineering, Xaar PLC, United Kingdom

3Department of Physics, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

10.1 Introduction

The period from 1995 to 2010 saw the emergence and then dominance of flat panel display technology over incumbent cathode ray tube technology. Laptop computers created the demand for what were then expensive displays, but flat panel displays have become ubiquitous not only because of their form factor and weight but also due to a significant effort to reduce the cost of production through a decrease in materials utilisation and capital equipment and by the economies that arise through processing larger substrates.

Flat panel displays, whether plasma, liquid crystal displays (LCDs) or organic light-emitting diode (OLED), are based on thin film technology, and as part of the cost reduction process manufacturers have been adopting thin film deposition technologies that utilise materials efficiently and are scalable to large substrate sizes. In addition, it has been essential that these technologies have a reasonable capital cost and can achieve high throughput. Inkjet printing has been developed for display applications precisely because it holds promise in decreasing the cost of manufacture of certain thin films used in displays. In particular, inkjet printing has been demonstrated for ...

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