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Organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) technology seems to be mired in the transition from research and development (R&D) prototyping to large-scale manufacturing. Simple monochrome and multicolor OLEDs have been on the market since Pioneer introduced a car audio player with an OLED display in 1997. Multicolor OLEDs are just now entering into a phase of significant incorporation in other small-format consumer electronic products such as mobile phones and portable audio players. In contrast, only a few full-color AMOLED displays have reached significant production levels. SK Display, a joint venture of Sanyo and Kodak, was the first to produce a fullcolor active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) panel in 2003 and incorporate it into a consumer product (Kodak LS633 digital camera). In the fall of 2004, Sony introduced the Clie PEGVZ90 Personal Entertainment Organizer, a multimedia personal digital assistant (PDA) with a 3.8-diagonal (D) “Super Top Emission” AMOLED. Product introduction schedules lag somewhat behind the forecasts, so OLED sales projections have been adjusted downward. For example, Display Search, a leading industry analyst, revised their estimates for OLED sales in 2007 from $3.1 billion (2002 estimate) to $2.6 billion (2003 estimate), indicating a ratcheting down of the growth projections.1,2

Many factors have contributed to delays in AMOLED manufacturing including those related to backplane manufacture, infrastructure readiness, and device performance. One issue that still concerns the industry is the limited number of technologies for patterning OLED materials in the fabrication of full-color, large-format displays. Scaling of these methods to cover large areas with high-resolution features is particularly problematic.3