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This article by Phyllis Maguire was published in U.S. 1 Newspaper
on February 25, 1998. All rights reserved.
Bright Future for an Academic Partnership
The new offices of Universal Display Corporation at
234 Nassau Street are unassuming: a four-room walk-up leased last
month, “with no pictures on the wall yet, but our name on the
door,” laughs president and chief operating officer Steven V.
Abramson. More important, this project office — UDC is
headquartered
in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania — is situated in the commercial
backyard
of Princeton University.
Just up the street is the Engineering Quadrangle with the offices
of the POEM Center, a lyrical acronym for the Princeton Center for
Photonics and Optoelectronic Materials. In one more block, there’s
Bowen Hall, a whimsical burgundy building donated by Gordon Wu,
guarded
by two stone lionesses flanking an ornate wrought iron gate. Inside
Bowen Hall, in POEM’s “clean” room devoted to research on
OLEDs or Organic Light Emitting Diodes, university scientists —
UDC’s partners since 1995 — hope to change the way in which visual
information gets delivered through all sorts of electronic devices.
Princeton researchers, collaborating with a group from the University
of Southern California, now comprise one of the largest teams in the
country doing OLED research — which Princeton University has
licensed
to UDC for a stake in the company that could turn into a gold mine
(see sidebar, page 51). And if OLEDs can make a successful leap out
of the laboratory, they may become within a few years the technology
governing the display function of every electronic device you use.
They might force, in other words, cathode ray tubes (CRTs) and liquid
crystal displays (LCDs) into the same dustbin now crammed with
black-and-white
televisions and rotary phones.
Potential applications for OLED displays seem endless. “They range
from thumbnail-sized up to entire walls,” says Janice Mahon, UDC’s
vice president of technology commercialization. “Many people today
think future displays will be very small, with optics expanding them
for direct view, and OLEDs will be terrific in miniature applications
or head-mounted displays. Or very large areas could become displays,
for entertainment purposes or for control-center applications in
industrial
or military contexts.” But many of OLEDs’ future applications,
Mahon maintains, don’t yet exist. “LCD technology essentially
created the laptop,” she says. “We’re expecting OLEDs to
create
applications that haven’t yet been invented.”
The O in OLED is Organic: synthetic, non-biological, carbon-containing
compounds. The key to the OLED Project’s success, says Joe
Montemarano,
director of industrial liaison for the POEM Center and the Princeton
Materials Institute, has been the collaboration between electrical
engineers and organic chemists. “Mark Thompson, who was originally
with the Princeton chemistry department and is now at USC, has been
a very strong contributor,” Montemarano says. “This is
something
neither an engineer nor a chemist could pull off alone.”
Leading the OLED Project is Stephen Forrest, chairman of Princeton’s
electrical engineering department. Forrest went to the University
of California, Class of 1972, and received his Ph.D. in physics from
the University of Michigan in 1979. He spent seven years at Bell Labs
where he began research into light emission, work he continued as
a USC professor for six years before coming to Princeton in 1992.
The carbon-containing molecules Forrest and his team research and
create “are organic dyes,” he says, “the type of compounds
that might appear as clothing dyes. They are `highly colored,’ which
is to say that they are colored in various parts of the visible
spectrum
— or in the invisible ultraviolet. The compounds we’ve selected
are luminescent in the visible. When you consider a colored compound
for a clothing dye, it’s basically its absorption that counts,”
says Forrest. In contrast, “when you look at these same dye
compounds
for OLEDs, it is how they give off light that becomes important.”
The OLED is a solid-state semiconductor device that actually emits
light when stimulated by an electric current, whereas liquid crystals
only reflect light from a back-lit source. “We did not invent
organic light emission,” says Forrest. “This class of
compounds
has been looked at for 50 years, and efficient organic light emission
really came out of Kodak in the mid-’80s. Our particular innovation
has been to make very functional layered devices using thin-film
technology
— and to get color out of them.” That innovation breaks into
what Mahon calls “three technology platforms” known as TOLED,
SOLED, and FOLED.
TOLED, or Transparent OLED, is the cornerstone technology. Synthetic
organic molecules are layered in a microscopically-thin film —
1/10,000th of the thickness of a human hair — with transparent
electrodes. “This is the first transparent technology,” claims
Mahon, “and it completely changes the display landscape. It means
you can make a window a display, or a windshield of an aircraft
cockpit.
You could use it for advertising or for emergency signaling in a car
— or you could have information coming in through your
sunglasses.”
TOLED technology is a building block for SOLED, or Stacked OLED,
referring
to the vertically stacked architecture of colored pixels for full
color display. “In conventional displays” — like CRTs
— “the red, green, and blue pixels are arranged side by
side,”
says Mahon. “It is your eye that resolves the color you’re
supposed
to see. With our technology, colors are stacked on top of each other
within each pixel; what your eye now resolves from conventional
displays,
the pixel will do for you. Stacking colors uses one-third the area
to convey the same amount of visual information. The advantage is
getting true color with three times the amount of resolution. “
And then there is FOLED, with an F for Flexible. OLED film can be
mounted on flexible plastic substrates, unlike LCDs in which liquid
crystals flow between two pieces of glass. That flexibility, says
UDC, will greatly expand potential applications for flat panel
displays.
“Someday these FOLEDS will be laminated to any surface you
want,”
says Mahon. “The computer might be one thin panel display with
an equally thin computer behind it you can roll up and put in a
briefcase.
That is still several years out, but this is the first step. With
a flexible substrate, the applications are unlimited.”
“Lighter weight, lower manufacturing costs, broader temperature
ranges, wider viewing angle.” UDC’s Abramson can rattle off
FOLEDs’
advantages over LCDs. “Since OLEDs emit light, they need less
power; that will make devices more portable. And as a faster display,
OLEDs are much more compatible with full-motion video. Response time
for LCDs is just too slow.”
Once it reaches the manufacturing phase, a major OLED advantage is
its roll-to-roll production, rather than LCD’s batch processing. Mahon
explains: “A large piece of rolled plastic will be run under a
set of deposition heads to build up the device. At the end of the
day, you have a product on a different roll with different materials
on it. As a production process, it is very high volume, with very
little labor and very economical.”
The huge liquid crystal industry is not standing still.
“They’re trying to get faster, but they’re making incremental
advances at this point,” Abramson says. UDC contends that other
emerging flat panel display technologies, like those that utilize
plasma, cannot compete with OLEDs’ color fidelity or cost efficiency.
And while UDC is certainly not the sole company developing organic
light emitting devices — “Every display company worth its
salt has an ongoing organic project,” says Abramson — it is
running well ahead of the OLED pack.
“Our ace is the two patents” — the first issued in
December,
1997; the second in January of this year — “for the
transparent
display and the vertically stacked architecture,” Abramson says.
“Another ace is our flexible display, and still another is the
fact that we have one of the largest research programs in the world
moving this technology forward.” And forward is where UDC intends
to go.
The corporation is the brainchild of founder, Sherwin Seligsohn.
“Sherwin
is a true visionary,” says Abramson. “In the late ’70s, he
foresaw the advent of digital cellular radio and put together a
company
to develop cellular technology.” Based in Pennsylvania, that
company
— then known as International Mobile Machines and now called
Interdigital
Corporation — eventually earned what Abramson estimates as $150
million in licensing revenues from cellular technology. That gave
Seligsohn the seed money he needed to go shopping for new
technologies.
“Sherwin thought the display industry was going to be even larger
than cellular,” Abramson continues, “and after looking at
all the competing technologies, he thought the organic light emitting
diode looked the most promising. He then sought out the best OLED
team, funding a Princeton research project after he found Steve
Forrest
and Mark Thompson. Once the technology reached a certain point, he
downstreamed it into UDC and took the company public.” Initial
private funding was approximately $2.5 million, while the public
offering
raised $6 million more. Common stock is traded on the Nasdaq SmallCap
Market (PANL) and the Philadelphia Exchange (PNL).
Abramson, now 46, first worked with Seligsohn as a patent lawyer.
With a B.A. in international relations from Bucknell, an M.A. in
international
relations and the philosophy of science from Ohio State, and a law
degree from Temple, Abramson started working for IMM in the
early-’80s,
founding its Technology Licensing Division before leaving to serve
as general counsel for an environmental technology company. He signed
on as UDC president in 1996.
“Our job is to create a business from the research,” he says.
“We raise the money and create the strategic relationships.”
As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the display industry is now
a $35 billion business. An estimated $20 billion of that market is
spent on the very un-portable CRTs found in color televisions. The
high information flat panel display segment of the industry in
consumer
goods like desktop and laptop computers accounts for $12 billion,
while the remaining $3 billion consists of low information displays
for products like cell phones, microwaves, and watches.
It is also an industry, claims the Wall Street Journal, that the
investment
community largely ignores. “That’s principally because it’s
offshore,
located in Korea and Japan,” Abramson says. “Wall Street wants
to invest in American companies, and there aren’t many display
companies
in America at this time. The top companies right now are Sharp,
Toshiba,
Sony, and Sanyo; they are all Japanese, and the display portion of
their business is only a small part. There are not many pure display
players in the United States, but that will change over the next few
years.”
Furthering that industry re-location is the United States Display
Consortium, a cooperative effort — headquartered in San Jose —
between DARPA and 130 corporate members, including UDC. USDC’s mission
is to develop a North American infrastructure of developers,
manufacturers,
and suppliers to support the flat panel display industry.
Says Abramson: “We believe this will be a worldwide technology
and we want America to have a piece of it — unlike liquid crystal,
which was invented down the road at Sarnoff (Corporation) and is now
controlled overseas.”
UDC’s commercialization strategy is to start simple and small.
“We’ll
begin with low-information content products like cell phones, pagers,
and audio equipment,” says Abramson. “Those are principally
monochrome. Then we’ll move into small area, full color SOLED
displays.”
With only a dozen people on staff and no profit yet in sight, UDC
still has a remarkably bright future, one in which the LCD technology
it intends to overtake has paved the way for OLED production as well
as development. “Making these devices will take advantage of
existing
industrial infrastructure,” says Mahon, 40, a 1979 graduate of
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a B.S. in chemical engineering.
Mahon did research for FMC in Princeton before earning an MBA from
Harvard in 1984. She worked with Chronar Corporation and SAGE
Electrochromics
and has been with UDC just over a year.
“OLED production can absolutely be integrated into existing
facilities,”
she continues, “without re-tooling factories or re-designing a
tremendous amount of new equipment. Ten years ago, before the flat
panel display industry got started, I couldn’t have made that
statement.
But a great deal of infrastructure has been redeveloped from
semiconductors
for flat panels over the past decade, and we can piggyback the
manufacture
of OLED technology on that experience and investment.
“Our timing,” Mahon smiles, “is excellent.”
Top Of PageFor the University, Equity
The two OLED technology patents recently issued to
Princeton
University and USC are the first of over 50 to be filed from the OLED
Project. According to Joseph Montemarano, director of industrial
liaison
who handles the licensing of technologies developed by scientists
with the POEM Center and the Princeton Materials Institute, his office
has filed another 50 patents that are not OLED-related. “That
translates to 10 or 15 companies and individual inventions,” he
says.
POEM was established in 1989, “at the urging of the faculty,”
says Montemarano. “Active outreach was always the intention. We
wanted companies to know that POEM is a place to come for technical
assistance and, possibly, very valuable technology.” While the
center itself has no specific academic appointments, it offers
facilities
and an administrative staff to help organize proposals, find
productive
partners, and manage grants and intellectual properties.
At Princeton’s Office of Technology and Trademark Licensing, John
Ritter is director of patents and licensing. Although the
POEM/Materials
Institute group is “our biggest source of invention
disclosures,”
Ritter says, “we license technology from many other departments,
including computer science, chemistry, molecular biology, and
mechanical
and chemical engineering.” Ritter estimates that the number of
companies licensed to manufacture technology generated by Princeton
researchers “is well over 25.”
While the Technology and Trademark Licensing office was organized
in the late ’80s, the agreement reached in October, 1997, for a
five-year
strategic partnership with UDC was unique: it gave Princeton equity
in a licensing transaction for the first time. Princeton and USC
together
own 4 percent of the stock and warrants, and Princeton’s share is
approximately 145,000 shares plus warrants. Since the stock is trading
at just under five, the university’s investment is now worth about
$750,000.
The seed for university licensing was planted in 1980 with the federal
Bayh-Dole Act. “Before that legislation,” Ritter explains,
“if a researcher came up with an invention after receiving federal
funding — and most of them did — then the government owned
the invention. The act made it possible for universities to own
technologies,
even those developed with government funds. That’s when licensing
offices began to sprout up.” Another factor driving the search
for corporate partners is reduced federal funding. Ritter’s role is
increasingly proactive, and while “companies recognize there is
important research being done here, we also pursue opportunities”
to market new technology.
“It was a first for us, but in terms of other institutions, it’s
not uncommon,” Ritter says. While Ritter expects Princeton to
become a partner in other equity deals, “we make sure the research
fits the university’s criteria. We don’t do product development, and
universities must watch that fine line very carefully.”
Top Of PageFor the University, Equity
The two OLED technology patents recently issued to
Princeton
University and USC are the first of over 50 to be filed from the OLED
Project. According to Joseph Montemarano, director of industrial
liaison
who handles the licensing of technologies developed by scientists
with the POEM Center and the Princeton Materials Institute, his office
has filed another 50 patents that are not OLED-related. “That
translates to 10 or 15 companies and individual inventions,” he
says.
POEM was established in 1989, “at the urging of the faculty,”
says Montemarano. “Active outreach was always the intention. We
wanted companies to know that POEM is a place to come for technical
assistance and, possibly, very valuable technology.” While the
center itself has no specific academic appointments, it offers
facilities
and an administrative staff to help organize proposals, find
productive
partners, and manage grants and intellectual properties.
At Princeton’s Office of Technology and Trademark Licensing, John
Ritter is director of patents and licensing. Although the
POEM/Materials
Institute group is “our biggest source of invention
disclosures,”
Ritter says, “we license technology from many other departments,
including computer science, chemistry, molecular biology, and
mechanical
and chemical engineering.” Ritter estimates that the number of
companies licensed to manufacture technology generated by Princeton
researchers “is well over 25.”
While the Technology and Trademark Licensing office was organized
in the late ’80s, the agreement reached in October, 1997, for a
five-year
strategic partnership with UDC was unique: it gave Princeton equity
in a licensing transaction for the first time. Princeton and USC
together
own 4 percent of the stock and warrants, and Princeton’s share is
approximately 145,000 shares plus warrants. Since the stock is trading
at just under five, the university’s investment is now worth about
$750,000.
The seed for university licensing was planted in 1980 with the federal
Bayh-Dole Act. “Before that legislation,” Ritter explains,
“if a researcher came up with an invention after receiving federal
funding — and most of them did — then the government owned
the invention. The act made it possible for universities to own
technologies,
even those developed with government funds. That’s when licensing
offices began to sprout up.” Another factor driving the search
for corporate partners is reduced federal funding. Ritter’s role is
increasingly proactive, and while “companies recognize there is
important research being done here, we also pursue opportunities”
to market new technology.
“It was a first for us, but in terms of other institutions, it’s
not uncommon,” Ritter says. While Ritter expects Princeton to
become a partner in other equity deals, “we make sure the research
fits the university’s criteria. We don’t do product development, and
universities must watch that fine line very carefully.”
For UDC president Steve Abramson, the collaboration
between the academic and corporate spheres is a novel one.
“Typically,
you see people coming out of universities to start their own
businesses,”
he says. “Instead, we’re taking a core competency approach.
Professors
can maintain their focus on research and teaching; entrepreneurs can
turn that research into a viable product, and manufacturers can then
take it to the mass market.”
For Professor Stephen Forrest, handing his research over to business
people is nothing new. “Several companies are working on different
technologies that have come out of my group,” he says. “It’s
an area I’ve worked in for a long time.”
For Forrest, staying in academia while others take his findings to
market is the best of both worlds. “One of the things I get at
the university is freedom. I can pursue an idea that may not have
immediate commercial impact, whereas in a company, I’d have to commit
myself to perfecting one product. It’s a very different set of skills
and missions, and I’m much more suited to the university side.”
Adds Forrest: “My students are now working on problems with great
relevance. For them to know that their work will help develop
technology
is extremely important and motivating. Meeting performance criteria
focuses their learning and, for engineering students, that’s a
wonderful
experience.”
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