Joint Venture of Sumitomo and Cambridge Display Technology in Polymer Oled Material Supply
Sumitomo Chemical and Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) have announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding to form a new joint venture company to develop and supply advanced polymer OLED (P-OLED) materials and formulated inks for use in commercial P-OLED display and lighting applications. The new company, to be based in Tokyo, Japan, will be owned equally by the two parent companies, and will have the largest concentration of P-OLED material development expertise and intellectual property (IP) in the OLED industry.
Research activities will continue in both the UK and in Japan, while chemicals manufacture will ultimately be based in Japan. The parent companies will channel existing P-OLED materials research and development activities into the new JV company, which will have access to the P-OLED material IP of the parent companies. Sumitomo has recently completed the acquisition of the Lumation(TM) business from The Dow Chemical Company, and will make available, on an exclusive basis, the polyfluorenes technology and IP of the Lumation business to the joint venture. To ensure a smooth transfer of technology and to avoid disruption to customers, Sumitomo and Dow have agreed to cooperate in transitional period activities. The joint venture will have access to the strongest materials set in the polymer OLED sector, including the current best-performing full colour P-OLED materials based on polyfluorene chemistry which CDT and Dow have developed over the last ten years.
It also has exclusive access to 'next generation' high efficiency materials based on dendrimer chemistry which CDT gained through the acquisition of Opsys in 2002. Sumitomo and CDT have been working together since that time on the dendrimer class of materials and have made great progress. The existing range of Sumitomo materials will now be manufactured and supplied by the joint venture, while for CDT, this is the first time that the company has been directly involved in the materials supply business. Materials supply by Covion is not affected by this new arrangement; Covion remains a materials licensee of CDT. This new joint venture company combines the high quality chemicals manufacturing experience of Sumitomo with the leading edge P-OLED development know-how of CDT and Sumitomo, and ensures that display and lighting producers have access to the very best performing materials. The synergies which flow from combining the experiences of the companies should increase the pace of development of P-OLED materials, and in turn this is expected to accelerate the adoption of the technology in the next generation of consumer products such as mobile phones, portable DVD players and ultimately televisions.
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