Correlated OLED Thermal Modeling Methods and Thermal Design Recommendations

Cutting edge tablet and phone designs are increasingly utilizing OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) displays. Although these displays are very thin and have excellent picture quality, they come at the cost of higher power than traditional displays which presents new thermal challenges. For thermal purposes, there are essentially 2 basic types of OLED displays based on their power distribution. In this presentation, I show thermal modeling methods I developed for both types of OLED displays and show the successful correlation of these models to experimental results. In addition, this presentation discusses some of the unique structural design requirements with OLED displays and ways to integrate both the thermal and structural solutions into an elegant combined solution. A thermal engineer can use the simulation methods and design recommendations described in this presentation to enable integration of this technology into products at an early stage of the design process.