OLED televisions are the odds-on favorite to supplant current technologies as the next generation display. Offering outstanding viewing characteristics, including high contrast, wide viewing angle and fast response time, OLED TVs are also lightweight, ultra-thin, and have low power requirements. A major roadblock preventing mass production of large-screen OLED TVs has been the lack of a technology capable of reliably forming uniform organic layers on large substrates. Vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE), currently the most widely used method of depositing organic materials, is surrounded by technical hurdles that have prevented it from solving the layer uniformity issue and making the jump to mass production of large panels. An inkjet process that deposits organic material in liquid form has long been viewed as the ideal alternative.

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.

"Large-screen OLED TVs are the future of displays, and Epson is committed to contributing to the transition to volume production through research and development projects involving inkjet fabrication technologies," stated Satoru Miyashita, General Manager of Epson's OLED Development Center.