Yay for Seiko Epson! The corporation just announced a breakthrough in the layering of organic material that should allow for larger OLED screens eventually. The current method, called Vacuum Thermal Evaporation (VTE), has problems producing uniform layers for large screens. This new method however overcomes the problems by using inkjet techniques, which should allow for larger screens.
Epson has recently developed the long-awaited solution in the form of an OLED display fabrication process that leverages the company’s proprietary Micro Piezo inkjet technology to achieve markedly greater accuracy in organic material deposition than the conventional technology. The process has been used in trial production to fabricate a highly uniform prototype panel. Extremely uniform layers (volume error < 1%) are achieved by precisely controlling the selection and ejection of multi-size droplets of ink material on a substrate so that only the required volume of material is deposited. Epson’s technology dramatically improves both quality and throughput and brings the advent of large-screen OLED TV a significant step closer to realization.
OLED screens are impressive but so far have been limited in size. Hopefully this new technique will change that.