9712253 Wilson *** This Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer project seeks to bring a technology fundamental to polymer light emitting diodes to the commercial marketplace as flexible lightweight, robust displays in the near-term. Before the full realization of this new technology can be felt by the consumer, however, several important materials issues must be addressed, including device efficiency, lifetime, failure mechanisms, and packaging. Recently, tremendous excitement has been generated in the field of flat panel displays by the introduction of small organic molecule (typically Alq - OLEDS) and polymer light emitting diodes (pLEDs). These developments combine low cost manufacturing normally associated with polymeric films with the opportunity to produce robust, lightweight and flexible non planar displays hereto unknown in the marketplace. Another significant advantage of organic based LED displays over their well known liquid crystal cousins is the elimination of viewing angle constraints. The immediate commercial application of this research is for near-hermetic packaging of polymer or small organic molecule light emitting diode based flexible displays. Other applications in the food packaging industry will benefit from new, transparent ultra-high barrier films. These applications include beer bottles, meal trays, food packaging for military uses, etc. ***
