Last year LG Display unveiled its latest OLED TV technology, branded as OLED EX, which uses a deuterium-based blue emitter materials, that enabled that LG to increase brightness by up to 30%. These panels are now adopted in LG's higher-end OLED TV panels.

According to a report from Korea, the deuterium-based blue emitters were supplied to LGD by DuPont. But the company has also been working its affiliate LG Chem to develop the capabilities to produce a similar deuterium emitter, and now LG Chem is starting to supply some of these materials to LGD.

LG Display announced that it has raised $1 billion in long-term loans from international banks, that will be invested in expanding its OLED module production line in Vietnam.

In September 2021 LGD announced it is set to expand its Hai Phong fab capacity to 13-14 million monthly units, in a $1.4 billion investment. It's not clear whether the new funds are an addition to that, or is this the funding for the 2021 announcement.

At SID Displayweek 2022, BOE demonstrated a 95" 8K OLED TV display prototype. This was an impressive display, and reports suggested that BOE is considering to start producing such panels commercially.

According to a new report from Korea, BOE has indeed decided to initiate production of OLED TV panels. BOE plans to produce 300,000 panels in 2022, in sizes ranging from 55-inch to 95-inch.

Tianma announced that it has successfully commercialized in-cell touch AMOLED displays, and it is now starting to mass produce the first such display to a customer, a well-known smartwatch maker that will ship the product in Q3 2022, globally.

Tianma explains that by adopting the in-cell structure, it has managed to reduce the total screen thickness by 20%, compared to its current on-cell technology. The new AMOLED display is also lighter.

UBI Research says that the OLED emitter material market reached $421 million in Q1 2022, down 21.1% from the previous quarter, but up 9% compared to Q1 2021. UBI estimates that the OLED emitter material market will reach $1.77 billion in 2022, and will grow to $2.4 billion by 2026.

UBI says that sale of materials for TV and mobile devices decreased (compared to Q4 2021) while sales of materials for the production of IT (laptops, tablets and monitors) displays were up $6.6 million.

Last month we reported that India-based gold-trading company Rajesh Exports has proposed to build a $3 billion 6-Gen AMOLED fab in India. It is now reported that the project is progressing, and Rajesh has signed an MOU with the local government of Telangana, a state in southern India.

Rajesh Exports established a subsidiary called Elest for this project. The plan is to build a 6-Gen AMOLED fab and produce displays for smartphones, tablets and laptops.

In February 2022 we reported that Samsung Display launched a new platform for OLED material simulation, called Sync-OLED, which is used to evaluation OLED material characteristics before they are synthesized, to help speed up R&D projects.

According to a new report from Korea, the new software platform have started operating, and is already in use by three companies. Sync-OLED, developed by Samsung and the KISTI institute, runs on a supercomputer called Nurion located at the KISTI Super Computing Application Centre. Samsung offers access to the software to small and medium OLED material research companies. Samsung's partners have access to the software at no cost.

LG Display has been developing OLED microdisplay technologies for several years, and according to a new report from Korea the company is now aiming to build its first production line, as it has hopes to supply OLED Microdisplay to Apple in the future. LG is reportedly ordering deposition equipment from Korea-based OLED equipment maker Sunic System.

According to reports, Apple is using 4K OLED microdisplay produced by Sony for its first-gen AR device. But Apple could aim to replace Sony (which is a direct competitor) in its later-generation devices.

Notion Systems GmbH, a leading manufacturer of inkjet printing systems for functional materials, has received several orders for its newly developed n.jet EHD platform. The EHD (Electrohydrodynamic) technology is a promising technology to reduce structure sizes to less than one micron and enables the use of higher viscosity inks. It supports printing of small structures in microelectronics, semiconductor and next generation display manufacturing. Notion will ship the first four n.jet EHD systems to undisclosed customers in Europe in the third quarter of 2022.

The overall benefits of inkjet printing in the display industry are:

• Printing of smaller features sizes compared with conventional inkjet printing
• Elimination and replacement of various process steps
• Material savings, as printing is done digitally and without masks
• Replacement of expensive process steps

Several presentations and discussions with industry representatives during Display Week 2022 in San Jose USA revealed that inkjet printing technology for OLED/QLED displays will play an important role in future production. Since standard inkjet printing has a limitation at 400 dpi, EHD technology is the way to go. This was one of the main reasons why Notion entered into a cooperation with EHD printhead manufacturer Scrona in Switzerland last year, says Antonio Schmidt - SVP Sales & Marketing of Notions Systems

OLED-Info has been following the OLED industry and market since 2004 (that's 18 years now!) and in 2017 we launched our sister site MicroLED-Info, to follow the emerging microLED industry.

Many analysts and display professionals believe that MicroLED technology is the leading next-gen display technology. Companies have invested billions of dollars in MicroLED R&D and the first displays are now entering the market. We believe there are many challenges ahead, but this is certainly a technology that no display professional should ignore.