Gravure Printing Technology Applied to Make OLED Panel

Jul 27, 2009 12:14 Megumi Yoshizawa, Nikkei Microdevices

Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) Co Ltd succeeded in making a passive matrix OLED panel by using gravure printing technology. It is intended for thin electronic display panels that can show variable information such as characters.

DNP has been developing a manufacturing technology based on a high-accuracy gravure printing technology that uses a polymer organic EL material and can easily make ink-like liquid from organic materials. This time, the company prototyped an OLED panel by using its dedicated gravure printer and special ink made from a polymer organic EL material on a glass substrate that measures 300 x 300 x 0.7mm.

With this ink, DNP formed three layers, a 60nm-thick hole-injection layer, 20nm-thick hole transport layer and 80nm-thick luminescent layer. The variation of each layer's thickness is within ±4%, and there is no variation in luminance, according to the company.

The drive voltage of the OLED panel is 12V. Because its luminance is as high as 100cd/m², it can vividly display variable textual information, according to DNP.

The company prototyped the OLED panel in two sizes, 192 x 32 x 1.4mm and 110 x 37 x 1.4mm. The pixel pitches are 1.0 and 1.15mm, respectively. And the pixel counts are 32 x 192 and 32 x 96.

DNP plans to develop OLED products by utilizing the new printing technology, aiming at commercialization in 2010 and sales of about ¥1.2 billion (approx US$12.7 million) in fiscal 2012.

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