OLEDs 2006 is an international conference designed to address recent business and technical developments in the OLED industry. The title of this year's event, the eighth annual, is "OLEDs World Summit 2006: OLEDs at the Crossroads -- Strategies for Increasing Production, Improving Lifetimes and Reducing Costs", and it will be held Nov. 13-15 at the Hilton San Diego Resort. More than 200 industry executives are expected to attend the conference, sponsored by Intertech-Pira of Portland, Maine, which will provide an opportunity for developers, manufacturers, users and investors of organic LEDs (OLEDs) to discuss and advance OLED technology and applications with OLED organizations and industry experts. Event organizers said particular attention will be paid to overcoming production, cost and lifetime obstacles in the race toward larger, more flexible displays and general illumination applications. Additionally, OLED applications, technologies and markets, including cell phones, cameras, media players, hand-held gaming devices, automotive panels and MP3 players, will be discussed by industry experts. The three-day event will feature 25 expert presentations from industry, two half-day seminars and 10 OLED industry networking opportunities. According to recent industry reports, increased investment in OLED technology, combined with the integration of OLEDs in a growing number of consumer applications, will drive revenues from $600 million in 2005 to more than $5 billion by 2009. OLED revenues are estimated to increase 66 percent for 2006 over 2005 and jump 142 percent for 2007, with revenues estimated at nearly $1.7 billion. In 2005, cell phones and MP3 players accounted for 52 and 43 percent of the OLED market, respectively. By 2009, analysts are predicting cell phone applications will account for more than 75 percent of the 325 million OLED sales each year, with automotive, camera, and game player applications in the next three years also bolstering sales of OLED products. Despite significant manufacturing hurdles and industry reshuffling, the OLED industry appears poised to move from the current passive matrix technology to active matrix displays in the next five years, boosted, among other things, by progress in low-temperature polysilicon manufacturing technology, analysts said. The summit officially begins on Tuesday, Nov. 14, with seminars including: "The OLED Evolution" by Barry Young, vice president & CFO of DisplaySearch; "Mobile Handset Displays -- The Biggest OLED Market Challenges and Implications" by Vinita Jakhanwal, principal analyst, Mobile Displays, iSuppli Corp.; "Patents in the OLED Industry" by attorney David C. Radulescu of the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP; "The Organic Semiconductor Industry: What Does This Have to Do With OLEDs?" by Craig Cruickshank, CEO of cintelliq Ltd.; "Status and Future Prospects for Phosphorescent OLED Technology" by Mike Hack, vice president of Strategic Product Development, Universal Display Corp.; "OLEDs for Lighting" by Dietrich Bertram, development manager, OLED Lighting, Philips Lighting; and "OLED Displays at the Crossroads -- Strategies for Entering Mass Markets" by Antti Laaperi, director, Display Technologies. On Wednesday, Nov. 15, seminars presented will include: "Challenges to the Commercialization of OLEDs" by David Fyfe, CEO of Cambridge Display Technology Ltd.; "Organic TFT Technology on Flexible Substrates" by Sony GM Jiro Kasahara; "Single Isolation Structure for a PMOLED" by Kyung-hee Choi, chief research engineer, Daewoo Electronics Corp.; "Efficient and Long Living OLEDs with Doped Transport Layers" by Karsten Walzer, head of the OLED Development Group at the Institut fuer Angewandte Photophysik; "Ink Jet Printing for OLEDs" by Eunice Wang of Fujifilm Dimatix, Inc.; and "Manufacturing Equipment Development for OLED" by David M. Waters, OLED engineering manager, Ulvac Inc. Two pre-conference seminars will be held on Monday, Nov. 13, and are not included in the conference registration fee. "OLED Backlight for LCD" begins at 8:30 a.m. and will be led by Munisamy Anadan, president and interim CEO of Austin, Texas-based Organic Lighting Technologies. Event organizers said the seminar will be of interest to OLED manufacturers; promoters of small molecule, phosphorescent and polymer OLED technology; OLED company executives; entrepreneurs and investors. Anadan has done OLED and LCD work at eMagin Corp., Matsushita Electric Works, Thomas Electronics, Bell Communications Research and Bharat Electronics. During the seminar, he will address the challenges OLEDs must overcome to compete with LCDs, with the backplane being the major one. White OLED technology can be used as a backlight in LCD cell phones, and, as a flat light source without exhaustive optical components, it holds a major advantage: OLED is the only flat light source available today that can replace white LED backlight in cell phones or digital cameras. Key topics to be discussed during the seminar are: current white LED backlight technology, current performance of white OLED backlight sources, preparedness of OLED backlight for improved LCD technology, and demands from backlight for improved image quality and the performance specification for LCD backlighting. A review of white OLED technology will also be provided. The second Monday seminar begins at 1:30 p.m. and is entitled "Flexible AM-OLED Displays: Technology Challenges and Barriers" and will be led by Arizona State University chemical engineering professor Gregory B. Raupp, who is also director of the ASU Flexible Display Center. His research in chemical reaction engineering and chemical reactions at surfaces span interdisciplinary application areas from processes and novel materials for flexible electronics and displays, microelectronics and packaging, to biocompatible and “smart” responsive coatings. He has published more than 110 technical papers and holds two US patents. This seminar will allow attendees to comprehend principal thin-film transistor AM technology options and their respective merits and drawbacks, while providing an understanding of the tradeoffs in display performance and the manufacturing process challenges of both bottom-emitting and top-emitting AM-OLED architecture. It will address questions such as: What are the flexible substrate material options, substrate toolset handling options, and what problems arise during processing because the substrate does not behave like display glass? The instructor will also help attendees comprehend strengths and weaknesses of barrier/encapsulation technology options and the special challenge introduced by flexible displays.For more information, visit: www.intertechusa.com