The first speaker in the afternoon session was the CEO of Cynora, Gildas Sorin, but he didn’t add anything to the presentation at the business conference although he did say that the firm is working closely with Chinese OLED makers as well as its shareholders, Samsung and LG Display. (BC22 Cynora Still Heading for Commercialisation) Sorin also said that he doesn’t expect microLED to be important in the market for several years and for OLED to be dominant for at least ten years. The company is also heading for a ‘C’ round of money raising with a target of $50 million by the middle of 2018. Once the company’s materials get to commercialisation, the business should be cash positive in six months.
(Separately, we had a discussion with Eric Virey of Yole about driving microLEDs using traditional OLED substrates. When you look at what you have to do – which is to drive them with PWM, the problems are incredibly tough in terms of current and particularly speed. The driving has to be with square waves, so there are some potentially very tricky issues of RFI. Interesting….Since then, we have thought more about it and also talked to big LED driver makers who point out the problems that will need to be overcome as LEDs emit light of a different colour both because of manufacturing variations, but also at different currents, which presents a big challenge if you want to drive them with an OLED-style current drive system rather than PWM)
Adachi-san from Kyulux repeated much of the content from the business conference. The company has raised Y1.5 billion and and is raising a further Y1.2 billion which will close in the next couple of months. (BC23 Kyulux Claims Better Than TADF FWHM)
Prof Beyong-Soo Bae of Solip Tech spoke at the business conference, too. He is looking for a “B” round of investment of around $5 million by around September to develop the company further. In response to questions, he said that his company can make some materials but it is open to discussions about licensing. (BC15 Solip Tech May Solve Problem of Protecting Flexible OLEDs)
