DuPont strengths in science and engineering enable innovation in both advanced materials and precision patterning technologies. We put this innovation to work bringing new ideas and efficiencies to a broad range of applications, including liquid crystal displays (LCDs), organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), plasma display panels (PDPs), and display films and coatings.

Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)
Within liquid crystal displays (LCDs), DuPont has three primary areas of focus: color filters, LCD enhancements and films and coatings. Color filters are a key part of LCD displays for televisions, laptops and computer monitors.  In color filters, we are developing a manufacturing process that makes LCD production more efficient.  Our industry-leading LCD enhancement technologies dramatically improve display performance without increasing power consumption. 

1. The DuPont™ Thermal Color Filter System (TCF) is a new precision patterning process for the manufacture of color filters.  The color filter is one of the most expensive elements of an LCD module.  The DuPont™ Thermal Color Filter System is estimated to provide a 30 percent reduction in cost to LCD panel manufacturers or color filter manufacturers through the elimination of production time and materials.

The TCF system that DuPont is developing leverages technology initially developed and commercialized for direct printing in graphics-based applications. DuPont will provide a total, integrated solution for customers, including equipment, donor film, software and service. DuPont’s objective is to enable LCD manufacturers to more competitively provide consumers with LCD televisions, monitors and laptops.

Environmental Advantages:

• DuPont TCF eliminates the use of organic solvents and all other developer chemicals currently used by the incumbent process of photolithography and fabricators.  DuPont TCF donor film also is in a dry form so there is no chance of hazardous spills during shipping and transportation.
  
  

• The DuPont TCF System eliminates photomasks and all associated materials including heavy metals such as chrome. 

• Through the elimination of process steps, clean room space for DuPont TCF is significantly smaller than traditional clean rooms for processing such as photolithography. Clean room space takes a great deal of energy to maintain due to the high volume of air handling required to constantly maintain clean conditions.  As a result, DuPont estimates that DuPont TCF should reduce energy consumption for clean room operations; using less space results in less energy required to maintain it.

2. In LCD enhancements, DuPont offers technologies to improve display performance in challenging environments with an efficient use of materials and low power consumption.  The DuPont™ Direct Bonding solution increases an out-of-the-box display’s contrast ratio by 300 percent without adding additional light bulbs that would require more power.  It also increases a display’s resistance to environmental threats such as condensation, which could cause damage and require additional replacement equipment.  DuPont™ Direct Bonding facilities are located in Asia and North America, making it easy to integrate into a display manufacturer’s supply chain and eliminating additional overseas logistics. DuPont also offers solutions including electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radiation shielding.

3. DuPont is emerging as a leader in its development of low-cost, high-performance films and coating materials for the displays industry. Based on the virtually unlimited range of DuPont films, coatings and related technologies, DuPont is developing film technologies for improved display performance and efficiency that can be applied across display technologies.  Two key products based in DuPont material science are the DuPont™ Optilon™ Advanced Composite Reflector and the DuPont™ Optilon™ Anti-Reflective Film.  The DuPont™ Optilon™ Advanced Composite Reflector increases display reflectivity, improves color, and improves UV and environmental stability.  DuPont™ Optilon™ Anti-Reflective Film is a single-layer, wet-coated anti-reflective film that significantly decreases LCD surface reflections and has excellent abrasion resistance. 

Environmental Advantages:
• With its highly diffuse properties, the DuPont™ Optilon™ Advanced Composite Reflector enables the already environmentally improved mercury-free LED backlight technologies to efficiently overcome diffusion challenges.   
• DuPont™ Optilon™ Anti-Reflective Film has a more efficient manufacturing process compared to some other industry films with the same function, such as sputtered films.  It uses one-layer of wet-coating as opposed to two or three, eliminating materials and manufacturing processes. 

Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs)

DuPont is a leader in the development of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), which produce low power, thin, high-performance flat panel displays.  OLED panels are emissive, eliminating the need for backlights and simplifying display design compared to other display technologies, such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs).  OLEDs are beginning to penetrate key applications in small displays today, including cellular phones and MP3 players. With DuPont technology, OLEDs can compete in a large range of products, including PDAs, personal digital media players, industrial and consumer electronics and other applications where bright, colorful, high contrast, thin, video capable displays are required, including large screen televisions.

Environmental Advantages:
• OLEDs have the potential to eliminate half of the material components of LCDs, and many of the associated manufacturing steps. And, because OLEDs can be thinner than other types of displays, they can lead to slimmer form factors for devices, which also reduces the material consumption footprint.
• OLED displays require less power to operate than other types of emissive displays because they use inherently energy-efficient materials, and also because, unlike LCDs, the display sub-pixels that are off (an average of 2/3 in a typical image) do not consume any power.  For mobile devices, the lower energy consumption of OLEDs results in less need to charge the battery (lower consumption of electricity), longer battery life, and smaller batteries that require less material to produce.
• DuPont OLED manufacturing techniques enable digital patterning as well, which results in a very low waste of OLED materials in the manufacturing process. 

Plasma Display Panels (PDPs)

DuPont created the standard metallization process for front and back panels of plasma display panels (PDPs) with our DuPont™ Fodel® photoimageable thick-film technology. Now the global industry standard for thick-film metallization, DuPont™ Fodel® is easy-to-use, has a wide processing window and provides the fine-line resolution required for HDTV. These attributes have been instrumental in enabling PDPs to attain their current attractive price points and excellent picture quality.  DuPont is also developing a next-generation metallization technology, Transfer Materials Technology (TMT), that will provide additional manufacturing efficiencies and the higher resolutions necessary for PDP panels to achieve “Full HD" resolution and enable PDP TVs to compete in the future with LCD TVs.

Environmental Advantages:
• The environmentally improved lead-free version of DuPont™ Fodel® enables compliance with lead-free directives while providing the same cost-effective, high-performance metallization for PDPs provided by previous-generation products. 
• DuPont is currently developing the next-generation of environmentally smart metallization technology, Transfer Materials Technology (TMT), to enable a more efficient use of materials in the production of PDPs:

• TMT is a dry film-based process that removes the need for processing chemicals used in today's metallization process, therefore eliminating process chemical waste disposal and associated costs.

• TMT eliminates multiple manufacturing steps, giving a shorter cycle time for panel production and lower capital cost and smaller footprint inside panel manufacturing facilities.

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