No. 356: A new emitting material for low cost production of organic electroluminescence for big screens (November 20, 2011)

An emitting material is the core material on which the panel color depends, and the low monocular type emitting material is widespread at present. Although it is stable in quality, it is mainly used for the small screen of a smartphone because it is not suitable for a big screen. Sumitomo Chemical developed a new emitting material that enables to produce big screens at a lower cost. The Sumitomo’s product is the high molecular type emitting material. Because it can easily be printable as ink, it is suitable for the mass production of screens bigger than 40 inches. It can reduce the cost necessary to process the emitting material on the panel by up to 50%. At the same time, the company is confident that its new emitting material has an enough product life for the application on the panel.

The company will build facilities for the mass production of this new product within the year with an investment of several billion yen and start mass production early next year as the first company in the world. It will ship new products to panel makers in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. According to a survey by a U.S. research company, the world market of organic EL panels will increase 13.6 times to about 1,650 billion yen in 2016 over the level in 2010. Actually, it is expected to grow quite rapidly even though its market size is only one fifth of the total liquid crystal panel market. The liquid crystal panel market is estimated to grow 14% in 2016 over the level in 2010 because of the foreseeable slow growth in advanced countries.