FEBRUARY 21--eMagin Corp. (Hopewell Junction, NY; www.emagin.com) has been awarded US Patent No. 6,337,492 for technology that can enable production of higher-brightness OLED flat-panel displays with longer life for a given level of brightness and can be used in future mobile information products such as wearable computers, electronic games, wireless Internet viewers, and mobile phones. The invention creates stacked organic light-emitting devices driven by a current flowing uniformly through each of the stacked devices, or "sandwiches." Each device emits light so that the sandwich generates more light with the same current flow than would be generated by a single device.
Combining the new structure with eMagin's high-temperature, long-life, full visible color spectrum white OLED display technology has the potential to more than double lifetime or luminance in future mobile information products designed to take advantage of the invention. The OLED sandwich is potentially most useful in manufacturing OLED displays that require operation at high luminance levels, such as aircraft helmet-mounted displays and sunlight-readable displays, or in applications with frequent long-term fixed-image patterns, such as instrument displays. This invention is adaptable to miniature optically viewed microdisplays, as well as larger direct-view displays.
