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Smartkem, the developer of a disruptive type of organic transistor that has the potential to drive a new generation of displays, today announced that it has entered into a collaboration agreement with RiTdisplay Corp. (RiTdisplay), a leading developer of optoelectronic solutions, visual displays and passive-matrix OLED (PMOLED) displays, for the manufacture of a new type of active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) display.
The Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs and Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), announced that they are investing a total of NT $650 million (approx. USD $20 million) to support both Taiwan and UK companies as part of the Taiwan-UK Research & Development Collaboration. As part of the collaboration, UKRI has committed £418.8K (approx. USD $530K) in grant funding to the Smartkem project with RiTdisplay.
Pursuant to the Smartkem and RiTdisplay collaboration, Smartkem will provide its proprietary OTFT materials to RiTdisplay to integrate with its frontplanes (OLED). If successful, the project will create the world's first commercially ready AMOLED display made using organic transistors, with properties of higher brightness, lower power consumption and higher dots per inch (DPI) when compared with existing PMOLED displays. Smartkem's OTFT materials are developed to be coated on standard display process equipment sets, such as spin-coaters, and can be processed at temperatures as low as 80°C. Consequently, this reduces energy usage and associated costs compared with processing inorganic transistor backplanes. If successful, the project is intended to demonstrate that high performance and stable display backplane technology is accessible to display manufacturers at a lower capital and operational cost compared to inorganic TFT technology as plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) tools are not required. The project is expected to be complete in 2026.Smartkem Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Ian Jenks comments, "This project follows up on our 2021 joint development agreement with RiTdisplay. If successful, we believe the integration of our materials will result in the development of the world's first commercially ready full color demonstration AMOLED display using OTFT backplanes."
Smartkem intends to engage the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan to develop a Gen2.5 (370mm x 470mm) backplane process using Smartkem's materials, which it believes will enable faster transfer to manufacturing equipment for commercial production after the project is completed in 2026.
