Merck - Page 8

Merck is a global pharmaceutical and chemical company based in Germany. The company designs, develops and manufactures a wide range of specialised materials including high performance light emitting materials for OLEDs. The OLED business belongs to Mercks' Liquid-Crystal (LC) unit.

I managed to conduct an interview with Dr. Udo Heider, the VP of the LC business unit at Merck (it's called the LC/OLED unit) about their OLED program.

Q: Hello Dr. Heider, and thank you for this interview. Can you describe your range of OLED products in more detail? Are you just into OLED materials, or other IPs as well?

Merck KGaA today announced the completion of an agreement to acquire the entire intellectual property (IP) portfolio of the company OLED-T with immediate effect. As we reported last month, OLED-T has gone into liquidation. We don't have any information on the financial side of this agreement.

OLED-T had an IP portfolio in the field of electron transport and phosphorescent-emitting materials for OLED application.

Karl Ludwig Kley (Merck's CEO) said that Merck aims to be one of the market leaders in OLED for displays. Merck however thinks that OLEDs will not only take over LCDs at least until 2030.

Via Hemscott.

Merck KGaA and DELO Industrial Adhesives announced today that they have formed a strategic partnership in the field of OLED technology. Within the scope of their agreement, the companies plan to develop future system solutions for OLED applications. The companies will join forces to market OLED adhesive products from DELO through Merck’s extensive marketing and sales channels.

In addition, Merck and DELO intend to develop innovative materials for improved OLED sealants that will facilitate the entry of OLEDs into large-format display applications. OLEDs show a high potential as the display technology of tomorrow and already are being used in MP3 players and cell phones. Within the OLED technology, Merck offers light-emitting materials while DELO offers new adhesive systems required to produce OLEDs.

Merck’s OLED materials are characterized by high quantum efficiency and longevity and the adhesives developed by DELO reliably seal off the sensitive metal layers from oxygen and moisture. This considerably extends the life of OLEDs. 

Merck KGaA announced today that it is launching several new OLED materials, including a blue singlet emitter (SEB series) that features ultra deep blue color coordinates. Measured in solvent, this dopant shows a color as deep as CIE(x;y) 0.15/ 0.09 with a full width half maximum (FWHM) of only 54 nm.

Merck said that in a bottom emission OLED device, an external quantum efficiency (EQE) in excess of 5.6% and color coordinates of 0.15/ 0.10 can be achieved with this new material. The stable material performance at high driving current and high temperatures makes the material ideal for passive matrix based automotive and mobile display applications. In active matrix top emission devices, the material allows panel-makers to achieve a high NTSC color gamut while drastically reducing power consumption and increasing product lifetime.

Merck also has developed a new light blue dopant for two color white or monochrome OLED applications. At CIE(x;y) 0.14/0.27, this material shows outstanding efficiency (7% EQE and 12.5 cd/A @ 1000cd/m²) and excellent lifetime above 36000h at 1000cd/m² for a basic bottom emission device structure.

Merck expects OLED to complement but not replace liquid crystal technology.

The reality is that OLED will come one day as an additional technology for flat displays. I say this with a lot of confidence," the head of Merck's chemicals business, Walter Zywottek, told Reuters in an interview.

Cambridge Display Technology and Litrex Corporation are paving the way for the production of a new generation of high resolution polymer organic light emitting displays (PLED, or P-OLED) through the development of an inkjet printing solution capable of producing PLED displays at up to 200 pixels per inch (ppi).

Cambridge Display Technology announces the sale of a sophisticated Eclipse display test system to Merck OLED Materials GmbH, based in Frankfurt, Germany. The equipment will be used to enhance productivity in the development and evaluation of materials for organic light emitting diode displays. The Eclipse system to be supplied to Merck consists of 192 digital source-measure channels and associated hardware and software, some of which has been customized for Merck's particular requirements.

Merck KGaA may start selling OLED Lighting products by the end of this year, Edgar Boehm, head of Merck's OLED business told the Financial Times Deutschland.

'Our internal plans call for us to start selling the first commercial products by the end of this year,' Boehm told the newspaper.

However, Merck has no set deadline for launching its OLED sales, and representatives at the company's German headquarters said the new products may not reach the market this year.

The government has already started up a €100 million ($130 million) initiative to support research and production of OLED's. Firms like Merck, Osram, Philips and Samsung have pledged to invest over €500 million.

Read more here

Merck announced that it has bought Avecia's OLED materials polymer electronics businesses, for €50 million in cash. The transaction is expected to be completed during the first quarter of 2005.

The acquisition includes Covion Organic Semiconductors GmbH in Frankfurt, Germany, a leader in the design, development and manufacture of high quality OLED materials. It also includes Avecia's polymer electronics research and development activities based in Manchester.