FRONTLINE: Printing OLED Materials

The emergence of consumer products—including televisions, MP3 players and digital cameras—using organic light-emitting diode display (OLED) screens could offer printers a new product opportunity. Sony last month introduced a high-quality OLED TV (shown), as thin as three stacked credit cards, to the U.S. market at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

OLED screens use organic substances that emit red, green, blue or white light, without any other source of illumination. OLED displays stack thin layers of materials with different particle charges. When voltage is applied, one layer becomes negatively charged relative to another transparent layer. As energy passes from the negatively charged (cathode) layer to the other (anode) layer, it stimulates organic material between the two, which emits light visible through an outermost layer.

Thermal CTP plates allow offset printing presses to print the light-emitting organic materials of an OLED display at required resolutions, which could open new markets for commercial printers.

Sony's 11´´ XEL-1 television, soon to go on sale, is its first TV for the U.S. to use OLED technology, which the company says enables superior picture quality (contrast ratio of 1 million to one). Sony also demonstrated a 20´´ prototype version. The XEL-1 is priced at $2,500.

Samsung also displayed OLED TV prototypes, 14´´ and 32´´ models at the event. sony.com and samsung.com