Japanese Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd. and Sony Corporation have signed a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) on November 28, 2005 to jointly develop new Organic Light-Emitting Diode luminous materials.
The companies have agreed to the mutual use of each company's OLED-related patents, i.e. material patents and component patents. The formal contract is expected to be signed at the end of January 2006.
OLED is a self-luminous display, which emits light by running an electric current through organic luminous materials. As a result of its simple structure, whereby the organic luminous layer is placed between two glass panels, no back-light system is required. This leads to a much thinner display. OLED is widely considered to be the most viable next-generation flat display, showing excellent color reproduction capability and high-speed response to moving images.
Idemitsu developed the world's brightest blue-light organic luminous material in 1997, based on their molecular engineering and organic synthesis technologies. Idemitsu has since continuously been developing new luminous materials for the mid-large size OLEDs. In addition to materials development, Idemitsu is aggressively working on new technologies such as combination technology for materials, OLED component technologies, etc.
Sony is developing various material and component technologies, and presented a 13 ?OLED panel in February 2001 and a 24? OLED in January 2003, based on low temperature poly silicon TFT (Thin Film Transistor) technologies. Sony's mass-produced OLEDs were adopted in the company's PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) products from September 2004. And now, Sony is working on developing new technologies for the realization of a mid-large size OLED panel.