CYNORA GmbH, a specialist in iridium-free and TADF emitter systems for organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), recently named Gildas Sorin as its new CEO.

Sorin brings significant experience in OLED materials to CYNORA, having been CEO of Novaled GmbH from 2003 to 2014. He also was with Philips Electronics for five years as VP of the Display Division and GM of the Philips Plasma Displays group. He began his career at Thomson Multimedia, where he worked for 20 years, including serving as president of Thomson Plasma and director of Thomson LCD.

Since its beginning in 2008, CYNORA has been successfully developing pure organic and novel copper-based thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitter material for printed OLEDs. CYNORA is also  developing TADF emitting material for vacuum deposition. Sorin noted that CYNORA’s development of TADF materials places the company in a good position in the OLED materials field.

“TADF is becoming a key topic for the further development in the OLED industry,” Sorin said. “TADF looks to be the only valuable approach for getting an efficient blue color, which is necessary for reaching high energy efficient OLED displays. CYNORA is a leader in TADF, with basic IPs on the technology, and has full potential to become a strong business story.”

CYNORA’s R&D team has more than 280 patent applications and granted patents, as well as several scientific and industrial awards. Most notably, CYNORA was named the Falling Walls Science Start-up of the Year 2013. For the Falling Walls Science Start-up of the Year award, 10 academic institutions and 10 venture capitalists presented their science-based enterprises to a jury, which selects the recipient of the award. CYNORA was honored for its development of organic copper-based semiconductors for OLEDs. Copper is priced favorably and is readily available; these semiconductors could replace iridium, a rare and expensive element, for mass manufacturing OLED displays and lighting. 

In 2014, cynora was awarded the German Raw Material Efficiency Award 2014 for its project, “Platinum and Iridium-free, Optoelectronic Materials for Material-Efficient Use in OLEDs.” In 2012, the company and the Karlruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) were honored with the SME (small and medium-sized enterprises) leading-edge cluster competition, Forum Organic Electronics, conducted by InnovationLab GmbH. cynora and KIT were honored for the cyFlex project, which focuses on the development and production of flexible, printed OLEDs based on new emitter materials.  

Sorin anticipates a bright future for CYNORA and for OLEDs.

“The flat panel industry is moving to OLED.,” Sorin said. “The OLED technology brings higher performances (color, real black, screen shape, fully flexible display, energy efficiency) to the end consumers. In addition, OLED allows the LCD display makers to reuse their know-how and investments of the LCD active matrix for the OLED display. In such a way OLED would be seen as a LCD++. We can expect that all LCD-makers move from AMLCD to AMOLED. In addition, OLED will allow companies to launch flexible lighting devices, and this will open the way for a breakthrough into the lighting industry.”