DuPont Displays And RiTdisplay to produce OLEDs in Taiwan

AUGUST 19--DuPont Displays (www.dupont.com/displays), a division of DuPont Electronic & Communication Technologies, and RiTdisplays (www.ritdisplay.com), a spin-off of RiTEK Inc., have launched a commercial production line for next-generation displays. The high-volume manufacturing plant will produce polymer-based OLED (organic-light-emitting-diode) flat-panel-display modules in Taiwan's high-tech center of Hsinchu for DuPont Displays to market.

The facility will at first manufacture single-color passive matrix displays, using polymer-based OLED technology. The facility will produce multi- and full-color displays by the end of 2003. Polymer-based OLED displays are brighter than today's flat-panel displays, have richer color, can be viewed from a variety of angles without backlighting, and offer a high-speed refresh rate. Important intellectual property for this technology has been licensed from Cambridge Display Technologies, the initial developer of polymer-based OLEDs.

The facility will initially have 50 employees and will expand to 115 employees. Full production capacity will be 30,000 sheets per month. DuPont Displays expects to be sending production-line samples to customers for a variety of applications in the fourth quarter of 2002 and ramping up to full commercial mass production in 2003.

According to market-research firm DisplaySearch, the flat-panel-display market is estimated to grow from a current $30 billion to $57 billion by 2006. OLEDs are expected to successfully penetrate key applications including cellular phones, PDAs, Internet-access appliances, industrial and consumer electronics, and other applications where bright, colorful, high contrast, thin, video capable displays are required. The technology is brighter, thinner, faster, and lighter than LCDs, uses less power, and is more efficient to manufacture.