UNIVERSAL DISPLAY

Company Overview

Founded in 1994, Universal Display Corp. has collaborated with researchers from Princeton University and the University of Southern California to develop leading-edge OLED technology for flat-panel displays, lasers and light-generating devices. It licenses its technology, which includes more than 4,200 patents, to OLED manufacturers.

Its early OLED customers include Tohoku Pioneer in 2003, Samsung SDI in 2007 and AUO in 2006. The company’s first known flexible display customer was the U.S. Army, for which it developed wrist-mounted flexible displays in 2010. In 2016, the company acquired more than 500 issued and pending patents related to the OLED IP assets of BASF spanning 86 patent families. In the same year, the company acquired Adesis Inc., which specialized in organic and organometallic synthetic research. The company also develops proprietary phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) technology and sells PHOLED emissive material systems.

As early as June 2000, UDC demonstrated a dynamic, image-scrolling, flexible OLED (FOLED) prototype and transparent prototype display. Some of the company’s use cases include foldable, electronic, daily-refreshable newspapers; ultra-lightweight and thin, wall-size television monitors; curved, high-contrast automotive instrumentation displays; and heads-up instrumentation for aircraft and automotive windshields. FOLEDs can be built on non-conventional flexible substrates, including plastics and metal foils.

UDC expects FOLEDs to be thinner and lighter than backlit LCDs, more accommodating of white OLED lighting tiles, more durable when compared to breakage-prone glass and relatively cost effective due to their suitability for roll-to-roll processes. UDC visualizes the FOLED stack to include the flexible substrate on which TFTs would be fabricated, passivation layer for TFTs, anode grid, the core PHOLED filter stack, cathode and encapsulation.

UDC has been working on FOLED with several partners, including Princeton University, LG Displays, L3 and the U.S. Department of Defense. UDC demonstrated its prototype in 2007 in the form of AMOLED built on flexible metal foil using amorphous-Silicon (a-Si) backplane technology. Its recent prototypes feature a metal foil-supported amorphous a-Si backplane from LG supporting a 4.3-inch HVGA, 134-ppi full-color AMOLED display. According to UDC, employing metal foils improves the ability of FOLEDs to withstand high temperatures and ensures superior and refined barrier properties. Apart from the industry, UDC has been supplying FOLEDs extensively to defense establishments, including Army Research Laboratories, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Army Communication Electronics Research and Development Engineering Center and the Air Force Research Laboratories.

UDC counts AUO, BOE, DuPont, Innolux, LG Display, Samsung Display, Tianma and Pioneer as its display partners.

FOLED was prototyped in 2000, and 17 years later the technology is far from attaining mainstream status. The difficulty lies in ensuring reliable yield and tackling the stresses. Mechanical stress, deposition-induced residual stress and thermal stress must all be tackled. The economics associated with adjusting the display ecosystem to accommodate the solutions to these challenges is overwhelming. UDC must persevere, as the end result will revolutionize the way displays are perceived and employed. Having demonstrated the efficacy of its flexible substrate material, UDC views the next frontier to conquer on the flexible OLED front as that of encapsulation. Toward this objective, UDC has developed encapsulation technology that doubles as barrier film for plastic substrates. This hybrid, single-layer approach contrasts with the multi-layer approach, which is time consuming and has proven to be a major deterrent to commercialization of flexible OLEDs.

In December 2017, Universal Display Corp. and Royole Corp. announced an OLED evaluation agreement: UDC will collaborate with Royole and supply its proprietary UniversalPHOLED phosphorescent OLED materials and technology for Royole’s display applications.

Financial Highlights (FY 2023)

Company's Business Segments

• Material Sales : This segment includes Evaluation, Development, Commercial Manufacturing of OLED Materials.
• Royalty and License Fees : Intellectual Property and Technology Licensing.
• Contract Research Services : Contract Research Services in the areas of Chemical Materials Synthesis Research, Development, Commercialization for non-OLED Applications.