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Cynora Buys Sunic’s R&D Deposition System
September 03, 2018

 
Sunic Systems a Korean supplier of OLED deposition systems, signed a contract with TADF developer Cynora. While the contract is relatively small ($2.9m), it does play into Cynora’s timeline for production of a blue TADF material by the end of 2019 (mass production a year later), and the company’s need to produce reasonable quantities of the material for testing by potential customers.  A small production system would be necessary to show customers that the process developed in the lab is transferrable to mass production. Cynora has stated that they have achieved a color point that satisfies commercial expectations and that this year would be one where they maintained that color point and worked toward extending its lifetime.  In May they showed a blue TADF material with a CIE y of 0.14, with a lifetime of 20 hours to LT97, and a quantum efficiency of 20%+ at a brightness of 1,000 nits. 
 
Cynora’s most obvious TADF competitor, Japan-based Kyulux noted that it has signed a joint development agreement with Samsung Display focusing on the development of a deep blue TADF material and had signed a similar agreement with LG Display in January. Samsung and LG are investors in both companies, participating in a Series A round of $13.5m in April, 2016, along with JOLED and Japan Display and a €25m series B round in September 2017 for Cynora, but what makes this announcement slightly different than what we have seen in the past is that Kyulux specifies that the JDA’s are for development of a blue TADF, along with its Hyperfluorescence™ process.  Kyulux has previously been working on the development of red, yellow, and green TADF materials and has said little about development efforts for blue, although we know they continue to work on such a project and have developed some ‘promising materials’, while Cynora has been focused entirely on the development of blue TADF materials. Kyulux has developed a yellow TADF material that was expected to be commercialized by WiseChip in a passive matrix mono-color display, they have achieved at least a level of commercialization although the product has not yet entered mass production. 
 
Meanwhile there are reports from Korea that Samsung and LG are testing (qualifying) a blue phosphorescent material, which if successful would put a big crimp in the plans of both Cynora and Kyulux.