Technique promises cheaper, brighter oled displays

While current methods involve the use of colour filters, these suppress two of the three colour ranges of an oled sub pixel and dim the generated light. In order to circumvent this, the red, green and blue sub pixels – which are integral to the depiction of a colour image – must be loaded onto the oled directly. "The subpixels in the tiny display are typically about 8µm^² in size. However, conventional technology only allows for the processing of units greater than 50µm^²," said Rigo Herold, of the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Organics, Materials and Electronic Devices COMEDD. In order to resolve this, the Fraunhofer scientists employed a special technology that facilitates the targeted vaporisation of organic layers locally, under heat. In this manner, surfaces can be processed that are smaller than 10µm^². "In order to use the technology for oled displays, we redesigned the entire manufacturing process," Herold explained. "It is therefore possible to load the red, green and blue colour pixels directly. The use of the colour filter is no longer necessary and it is possible to use 100% of the light emitted."