Business Concentrates CONSUMER PRODUCTS
OLED growth spurs spending spree Raw materials producers expand facilities, boost R&D, and acquire assets Encouraged by aggressive capacity expansion among manufacturers of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays, suppliers of display raw materials are proceeding with investments of their own. Universal Display will spend $15 million to double production capacity for phospho-
Universal Display’s phosphorescent materials are used to make OLED displays. rescent OLED emitters at PPG Industries’ plant in Barberton, Ohio. PPG has been providing contract manufacturing services to New Jersey-based Universal since 2000. Fitted with a clean room, the Barberton plant makes organometallic emitter molecules that feature an iridium metal complex. Separately, Samsung-owned Novaled has started constructing a $21 million R&D facility and company headquarters in Dresden, Germany. Novaled claims its materials—organic dopants—are present in most of the world’s OLED displays.
In Switzerland, Idemitsu Kosan is setting up an OLED materials R&D center that will employ researchers from BASF, with which Idemitsu has been collaborating. The Japanese company is a technology leader in blue emitters. Creating blue remains challenging for materials suppliers because blue OLED materials convert energy less efficiently. Also in Switzerland, BASF has acquired the display materials supplier Rolic. Employing 110 people, Rolic is a technology leader in photoalignment materials and films used in the production of OLED displays and liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), BASF claims. Although OLED displays are not as commercially prominent as LCDs, the market has been growing rapidly in recent years for phones and TVs. Tadashi Uno, a senior analyst at the consulting firm IHS Technology, expects production of active matrix OLED displays—the type used in smartphones— to surpass 10 million m2 by 2019, four times what it was in 2015. Uno warns that growth is hard to predict from one year to the next. In the near term, much depends on whether Apple adopts OLED technology for its next generation of iPhones. Nonetheless, display producers are expanding aggressively. LG Display announced last month that it will invest $4.3 billion this year to increase OLED display production. Meanwhile, Samsung Display is spending more than $4 billion on OLED display plants.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS
TREMBLAY
BY THE NUMBERS
+ $4.5 billion The U.S. trade balance for organic and inorganic chemicals in 2016, a decline of 46.1% from 2015, according to the Census Bureau. The U.S. had an overall trade deficit for goods and services in 2016 of $734 billion. President Donald J. Trump has pledged to reduce America’s trade deficit by renegotiating trade deals.
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | FEBRUARY 13, 2017
New life for old preservative As retailers and product formulators band together to find new cosmetic preservatives, Emerald Kalama Chemical is investing in 50-year-old sodium benzoate, calling it a safe, readily availO able alternative for a numO– +Na ber of biocides under fire. Today, many Sodium benzoate consumers shun preservatives such as parabens, methylisothiazolinone, and imidazolidinyl urea because of toxicity and skin sensitization concerns. In November 2016, the Green Chemistry & Commerce Council said it would launch a competition backed by retailers and others for new cosmetic preservative concepts, with prizes up to $25,000. Driving the effort, GCC said, was a need to accelerate commercialization of safe and effective preservative systems in a market where so many of the old standbys are under attack. But Emerald CEO Ed Gotch says the products his firm offers are already approved by regulatory authorities. Sodium benzoate and its precursor, benzoic acid, have been around more than 50 years and are already widely used in foods, beverages, and pharmaceuticals to guard against mold, mildew, and fungus, he says. The company is confident enough in sodium benzoate’s potential in cosmetics and other uses that it plans to add 30,000 metric tons of annual production capacity at its Rotterdam, the Netherlands, plant by 2019. Produced via toluene oxidation, benzoic acid is a “highly purified synthetic equivalent” to benzoic acid derived from cranberries, Gotch says. Although naturally derived benzoates would cost hundreds of dollars per kilogram, synthetic benzoic acid costs $1.00–$2.00 per kilogram, and sodium benzoate costs about a dollar more, Gotch says.—MARC REISCH
CREDIT: UNIVERSAL DISPLAY
ELECTRONIC MATERIALS
