Princeton Receives Patent For Flexible Plastic Organic LEDs

Universal Display Corp. (UDC, Bala Cynwyd, PA), announced that a patent has been issued to its research partners at Princeton University (Princeton, NJ), for developing flexible, plastic, organic light-emitting devices (LEDs). A developer of flat-panel technology, UDC has the exclusive worldwide rights to the invention.

"Until this breakthrough by Dr. Forrest and his team at Princeton University, experts did not believe that small molecule organic materials could be used on flexible substrates," says Steven Abramson, president of UDC. "This advance, combining the precision of vacuum-deposition processing with the advantages of plastic, is a major step towards the flat-panel industry of the future, which we believe will be built on full-color, low-power, lightweight plastic organic LED displays."

These new displays may have cost and performance advantages over flat-panel displays built on traditional glass substrates. With the organic LEDs, new products can be created that were not possible with existing materials. Roll-up plastic computers are among the lightweight, rugged electronic displays that could be created with the technology.

This was not the first patent awarded to Princeton researchers for their work with LEDs. On Nov. 10, 1998, U.S. Patent No. 5,834,893 titled "High Efficiency Organic Light Emitting Devices with Light Directing Structures" was issued and should be beneficial for high-reliability, high-efficiency, integratable optical LED structures.

Since 1994, UDC has had a strategic research partnership with Princeton University and the University of Southern California (USC) to develop organic light emitters. Recently, the partnership was extended through 2002 and the universities became shareholders in UDC. Applications that may result from this work include flat-panel displays, lasers, and light-generating devices.

UDC is a member of the United States Display Consortium, a cooperative industry/government effort aimed at developing an infrastructure to support a North American flat-panel display industry. In cooperation with Princeton, USC, and Hughes Electronics, UDC is working under a $3 million award from the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for the continued development of ultra light-weight, full-color optical LED flat-panel display technology.

UDC and Princeton are also teaming on a Phase I STTR grant from the National Science Foundation and a grant from the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology.

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