Merck Ltd. Korea said on Sunday that its new Application Development Laboratory has gone into operation at the Advanced Technology Center in Poseung, Pyeongtaek in southwestern Gyeonggi Province.

The multinational company started the operation after holding an opening ceremony for the laboratory, built to facilitate research and development of organic light emitting dioxide, on Oct. 5 with the attendance of a number of senior government officials and customers.

“The Application Development Laboratory design, based on the newly built OLED laboratories in the Materials Research Center at Merck in Darmstadt, will offer a perfect platform for developing world-class OLED materials in close collaboration with our Korean customers,” said Merck Korea President Juergen Koenig during his opening speech.

The company said the new lab offers chemical synthesis, refinement and material analysis. 

The OLED market began to receive spotlight since 2009, when OLED was adopted as a main display for high-performance mobile phones. Using the technology even allows devices to be bent and rolled without interrupting their screen performance.

The boom began to take a faster ride after Samsung Anycall released a mobile phone named “AMOLED,” Active Matrix OLED, in 2009. Samsung Mobile Display beat out its competitors in the race and currently dominates 99 percent of the OLED market.

Due to steep increases in demand, however, the future of OLED is now highly dependent on the future investment of display-related companies such as Merck.

The high cost and short supplies in manufacturing added the burden, holding back further contributions of AMOLED on electronic devices.

Despite the challenges it faces, Merck ADL vowed to take a bigger role and become a platform for developing world-class OLED materials and large OLED products.

So far, AMOLED TV makers, LG Electronics and Sony, have been only introducing pilot lines. Through its operation in Seoul, Merck looks forward to collaborating with IT companies in launching full-fledged large AMOLED products, according to officials.

Merck is a global pharmaceutical and chemical company that employs more than 40,000 people in 64 countries. 

By Monica Suk (monicasuk@heraldcorp.com)