Executive of OLED Development Group gets bronze medal for technology



LG Display’s technology for making large organic light-emitting diode displays has been recognized ahead of Invention Day with one of its executives scheduled to win the bronze medal on Friday.

The Korea Invention Promotion Association will give the industrial bronze medal to LG Display’s senior vice president Ahn Byung-chul of the OLED Development Group for coming up with the firm’s proprietary White-OLED technology for 55-inch OLED TV display panels.

With plans to introduce the 55-inch OLED TVs in the latter half of this year, LG has been competing with its rival Samsung Electronics to roll out the premium TV sets this year.

LG has concentrated on the W-OLED display technology, which is the product of four sub pixels ― white, red, green and blue ― intended to offer better picture quality, more affordable pricing and bigger sizes.

Samsung, however, has adopted the RGB-technology for its 55-inch OLED TVs, leaving room for the adoption of a new technology from next year.

LG Display’s Ahn, who has won multiple awards for his inventions since joining the company in 1984, has registered up to 246 patents involving a number of innovative technologies such as the W-OLED technology.

“W-OLED technology is a premium-level display technology that supplements the lack of productiveness of the blue color in the RGB-OLED technology,” said Ahn.

According to Ahn, the W-OLED technology enables more precise and smaller pixels compared to the RGB-technology, leading to a lower error rate and a clear ultra definition screen.

As a result, it is appropriate for use in large displays as well as providing a wide viewing angle and a better design, he said.

Breaking the presumption that it is impossible to make 40-inch and above OLED panels, LG Display was the first to come up with the W-OLED technology to manufacture the OLED panels for 55-inch TVs last December.

Most recently, LG Electronics unveiled the 55-inch OLED TV for the first time in Korea during an electronics show in southern Seoul this week.

The move comes as LG aims to take up more than 3 percent of the global TV market with its OLED TVs this year.

LG Display’s chief executive Han Sang-beom said during a press conference in Last Vegas in January that the company’s full high-definition OLED TVs will be cost competitive and that the firm will also focus on projects involving OLED and plastic OLED this year.

He also said the OLED technology is seen as the future of TV displays and that the 55-inch panel is a significant step forward in the popularization of OLED TVs.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)