Merck and Epson announced a cooperation and licensing agreement for inkjet inks. Epson will supply Merck with ink technology that dissolves Merck’s organic light-emitting diode (OLED) materials so that they can be used for the production of printable displays used in OLED television screens.

The use of inkjet technology for printing OLED displays requires a combination of long-lasting OLED materials and ink technology for firing (printing) the OLED materials both quickly and accurately. This will make the mass production of large OLED displays possible, which until now with conventional vapor-deposition techniques has proven to be financially and technically difficult.

According to a market researcher of DisplaySearch, OLED TVs will be the second biggest TV technology after liquid crystal display (LCD) TV. It is forecasted that by 2017, LCD TVs will have a 93 % market share of all TVs sold and OLED TVs will fetch the remaining 7 %.

• Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
• Seiko Epson Corporation, Japan