Active Matrix OLED Displays

Organic electronics, such as OLEDs, have already entered the $45 billion flat-panel display market. OLEDs offer the advantages not only of lower cost, but also of performance. OLEDs are more energy-efficient and last longer than incandescent light bulbs, can be assembled on plastic substrates, and have none of the viewing angle problems of liquid crystal displays (LCDs). Today, as many as fifty companies have OLED R&D programs. Market research firm DisplaySearch predicts that OLED displays will capture $1.6 billion of the overall display market by 2007, up from just $84 million today. ORFID believes that its VOFET technology offers the potential to drive growth of the OLED display market.

Initially, ORFID is targeting the market for small-sized displays used in products such as cell phones. In the 2005, sales of cell phones will exceed 600 million handsets. ORFID estimates that transistor backplanes account for 50% of the approximately $15/handset cost of today’s typical cell phone screen. With its VOFET technology powering OLED cell phone displays, ORFID believes that it can save manufacturers of cell phones $4.4 billion in manufacturing costs. ORFID currently plans to co-develop and out-license technology for use in large-area displays, such as TVs and billboards, where device performance and manufacturing requirements are more demanding than for small displays. ORFID will also license-out its technology for "non-core" applications.

RFID Tags

This year’s global market for RFID including tags, systems, and services is $1.94 billion and the market is estimated to be $26.90 billion in 2015. This translates to 1.5 billion tags sold in 2005 and approximately 1 trillion tags sold in 2015. These tags will be used in a variety of applications: pallets/cases, pharmaceuticals, baggage, animals, books, tickets and other non retail markets. For some of these applications, the tag value will be high (e.g. tagging pharmaceutical products) and for other applications the tag value will be low (e.g. inventory management of pallets and cases). The highest volume, lowest value applications of RFID will mimic barcodes.

RFID technology enables wireless communication for safe and accurate ID, tracking, and processing. As such RFID-enabled wristbands have revolutionized hospital patient management. The wireless, automated, and secure process of RFID ensures positive patient identification and fully streamlined operations. Unlike bar code, RFID's non-line-of-site data transmission can be read through and around the human body, clothing, bed coverings, and non-metallic materials.

RFID wristband systems are also being used for patron management at various entertainment venues. RFID wristband systems provide wireless communication to increase per cap spending in food and beverage, to reduce shrinkage (cash drawer discrepancies), to allow for breakage (non-refunded cash left on wristband), and to provide custom imprinted advertising revenue opportunities.

We believe that one cent and sub one cent tags will be needed to replace bar codes to tag everything in the supermarkets - the largest volume potential for RFID. This price point may never be achieved with silicon technology. Alternative technologies will be required such as organic RFID circuits manufactured using ultra cheap printing techniques and chipless technologies based on surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices or inductive capacitive (LC) arrays, as examples. ORFID plans to develop technology to enable low-cost, high volume printable RFID tags to address item-level tagging needs of companies with superstores such as Walmart.