Tuesday, October 8, 2013. The following technical observations are a supplement to the asensio.com report on Universal Display Corp. (“UDC”; NASDAQ: OLED) titled “The Real Origins of Universal Display’s OLED claims.” These observations are intended as support for asensio.com’s finding that the laboratory work that is the basis for UDC’s key patents represents trivial, mundane, optimizing experimentation.
The observations below are based on a review of publicly available data on UDC’s experiments provided in the DARPA presentation and the EP-238 patent specification itself. These represent some of the observations that are available to the lay person with expert guidance. The documents are available at the Universal Display Data Room here: Experimentation Disclosure: EP-238 and Experimentation Disclosure: DARPA
Figure 1 is schematic representation of a typical OLED with a heterostructure showing the presence of Ir(ppy)3, which is well-known to generate usable light when used as phosphorescent emitter material in an electronic device. Figure 1A shows the Ir compound. Figure 1B shows the host compound that’s represented in the heterostructure as CBP. Figure 1C shows the compound used as a barrier layer that’s represented in the schematic for the heterostructure as BCP.
Figure 2 simply shows the performance of the heterostructure presented in Figure 1 with six different combinations, varying the amounts of the Ir and the host materials shown in Figure 1. Figure 2 shows the performance of the configured OLED when the barrier layer is removed or the host is changed, essentially ruining the performance of the device as expected. UDC didn’t claim a new invented barrier layer or host, but merely used existing parts. For this small, routine, common process, the performance among the limited OLEDs built without difficulty leads to the conclusion that the best-performing of the few tested combinations is 6% Ir and 94% host with a barrier layer. Other countless part combinations were not disclosed.
Figure 3 merely shows the efficiency of the use or consumption of voltage compared to the amount of light generated by the device represented in Figure 1. Figure 3 also changes the intensity of the electrical current to determine the color of the light emitted by the device represented in Figure 1.
Some of the DARPA slides appear complicated at first. But to anyone with experience in this type of lab work what appears sophisticated is actually common and mundane. For instance, in one experiment the emitting molecule was mixed with four chemicals: namely, Benzene, Chloroform, Methanol and Dimethyl Sulfoxide. They were agitated, and the reaction was measured by standard, commonplace ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry. This is a procedure that is routinely used in analytical chemistry particularly in the selection of substances during routine optimization work. This work does not require expensive or even the customized equipment required in fundamental ultrafast chemical experimental research. Another disclosure shows experiments using several heterostructures with different set ups, which represent simple minor changes in the thickness of the parts. Again this is typical is routine optimization work. It shows commercially available equipment used to perform common procedures that were already a routine part of the fabrication of OLEDs.
Another example of the simplicity of the DARPA experiment is seen on page 56 of the DARPA document; in the lower left-hand box there is another schematic representation of a heterostructure. This one uses platinum in CBP showing that it is identical to EP-238. Both devices use virtually identical heterostructures, and both of course were well known at time.