We are thrilled to announce that Steven Van Slyke and Ching W. Tang received the 2024 Karl Ferdinand Braun prize for their invention of the OLED device. Steve became CTO Emeritus at Kateeva in 2019 after serving as CTO for ten years.

Steven Van Slyke, CTO Emeritus, Kateeva

The prestigious award, which is the highest honor conferred by the Society for Information Display, recognizes “outstanding technical achievement in, or contribution to, display technology”.

The award will be presented today at Display Week 2024 in San Jose, Calif. It celebrates Steve and Ching’s vision and innovation, which continues to influence the consumer electronics industry.

As Kateeva’s CTO, Steve joined our founders to develop and commercialize an inkjet printing equipment solution to mass produce OLED displays. While OLED technology promised to revolutionize consumer electronics products by enabling thinner, lighter, and even flexible displays, with superior brightness and color, traditional manufacturing equipment could not mass produce the displays cost-effectively.

Kateeva’s inkjet innovation delivered the production solution that helped drive the industry’s transition to OLED technology. The first Kateeva product for OLED Thin Film Encapsulation (TFE) helped catalyze the new era of mobile OLED displays used in smartphones, tablets, and other consumer devices. The system fast became the tool of record and market leader thanks to its unique technical advantages and reliability in mass production. Today, nearly every smartphone in the world features a display enabled by Kateeva TFE technologies.

Steve and Ching’s OLED invention continues to advance innovation in the display industry as manufacturers scale to mass-produce larger panels for IT OLED applications. Kateeva is keeping pace with a portfolio of inkjet products to enable the large-size panels.

At Kateeva, we stand on the shoulders of Steve and Ching. It was their vision that captivated Kateeva’s co-founders and produced the innovation that helped catalyze the industry’s shift to a radical new display technology. With his keen knowledge of OLED device structures and associated manufacturing imperatives, Steve helped our world-class team build the differentiated inkjet solutions that continue to help leaders build advanced displays. We are thrilled for Steve and Ching to receive this prestigious accolade.”

Bin Liu ~ CEO, Kateeva

Steve’s pioneering work began at the Eastman Kodak Company where he collaborated with Ching to develop OLED technology. Their seminal paper on the topic appeared in the journal of Applied Physics Letters in 1987. It has been cited in more than 21,000 publications since then. In addition, Steve has published and presented over 40 papers and holds 40 patents in the areas of OLED materials and device architecture.

The Karl Ferdinand Braun award is the latest honor for the OLED co-inventors. Previously, they were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2018) and the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame (2013)

Ching & Steve at the 2018 National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) Awards (Photo credit: NIHF)

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