OLED ink jet printing: introduction and market status - Page 16

Kateeva announced that it has closed its Series-E funding round - with $88 million in new financing. The new investors (all from China) include BOE Display, TCL Capital. Kateeva raised over $200 million in total, and previous investors include Samsung Ventures and Veeco.

Kateeva is developing and producing ink-jet systems for OLED production. Originally the systems were intended for OLED stack material deposition, but in 2014 the company also started to offer ink-jet based encapsulation systems - used to protect flexible OLED displays.

JOLED's head of business development, Tomoaki Tsuboka, announced that the company developed two OLED panels, a 12.2" FHD (180 PPI) panel and a 19.3" 4K one (230 PPI) - made using printing technologies. JOLED aims to mass produce such panel in 2018.

Tomoaki updates that JOLED is preparing a Gen-4.5 fab to produce such OLEDs - probably using printing technologies. Reports from 2015 suggested that JOLED plans to invest $160 million in a new R&D and production facility - that will indeed commence production by 2018.

Samsung Display recently confirmed that it is still developing large-sized OLED panels, and a couple of weeks ago it was reported that Samsung is discussing a large investment (around $3 billion US) into a new OLED TV panel fab.

New reports from Korea gives more details about Samsung's OLED TV plans. Samsung is actually considering a slightly larger investment - around $3.3 billion in a new fab, with an aim to enable Samsung Electronics to launch OLED TVs by 2018. Samsung is looking to build a Gen-8 (2200x2500 mm, or six 55" panels) fab - and will need to start ordering equipment soon. The new fab will enable Samsung to produce about 495,000 square meters in 2017 (7,500 monthly substrates) and over 2 million square meters in 2018.

Update: originally we posted that the market for solution-based OLEDs will be $395 million in 2020, but the correct UBI is estimate is much higher - $2.4 billion

UBI Research estimates that solution based OLED processes could reduce the price of a 55" OLED TV panel by as much as 43" compared to the currently used WRGB evaporation based process.

UBI further says that solution-based OLEDs will be cheaper to produce than LCD panels. The company estimates that companies will start mass producing solution-based OLED TVs in 2018, and the market of solution-based panels will reach $2.4 billion by 2020.

DuPont announced the opening of a new state-of-the-art, scale-up manufacturing facility designed to deliver production scale quantities of advanced solution-based printed OLED materials. DuPont specifically says that these materials will target OLED TV applications.

The new OLED facility has large-scale formulation systems and can support simultaneous production of multiple product lines. DuPont invested over $20 million in this new facility, which was also funded by a grant from the state of Delaware back in 2012.

LG Display is one of the two companies that lead the OLED industry, and the Korean display maker recently announced a major shift in focus from LCD displays to OLEDs. We conducted a short interview with an official from LGD regarding the company's OLED business goals and aims.

Q: LGD's CEO recently gave a very exciting speech regarding OLEDs, as the company shifts its focus towards OLEDs. What made you take that decision? How do you see the OLED TV market evolving in the next few years?

Market competition is getting fiercer with Chinese manufacturers rapidly catching up in terms of technology and capacity. In response, we recognize that differentiation in product and technology is essential to growth and maintaining leadership in the display industry.

The Korea Times posted an interesting interview with Brian Daniels, senior VP from Merck's performance materials-advanced technologies division. Brian says that Samsung is committed to OLED panels - and will return to the OLED TV market by 2017.

Merck says that improvement in OLED materials will enable cost reductions which will enable OLED TVs to reach large production volumes in three years.

According to my sources, OLED Technologies & Solutions BV, an OLED display manufacturing solution provider, has filed for bankruptcy. This is a sad ending to a long standing OLED company that started out as OTB Display years ago.

OTS offered a total solution for OLED display manufacturing: in-line OLED printed display manufacturing systems, backplane and display product development, OLED device, stack, and ink development, process development expertise and display characterization and improvement. The company developed a fully automated printed OLED processing line, the PCAP-20, and was developing their next-gen tool, the PCAP-48, a Gen-4.5 OLED processing line, designed to produce high quality large screen HDTV displays with industry record yields and lowest cost per display.

TCL's chairman, Tomson Li, gave an SID DisplayWeek speech, during which he predicted that the next-gen large-size displays will be printed OLEDs. Tomson said that global partners are welcome to join TCL and co-develop printed technologies, processes and materials.

During the DisplayWeek exhibition, TCL's CSOT subsidiary demonstrated three new AMOLED display prototypes, including a 5.5" PWM LTPS OLED and a 31" OLED TV panel. In May 2014 TCL announced plans to co-develop 5.5" LTPS AMOLEDs with Ignis innovation, I do not know if the new 5.5" demonstrators are based on this collaboration.

Kateeva and DuPont announced that they will co-develop solutions for ink-jet printed OLEDs - specifically they will optimize DuPont's soluble materials for Kateeva's inkjet systems. The two companies hope this collaboration will enable then to offer a simple and highly-effective OLED TV printing process.

This follows Kateeva's agreement with Sumiomo Chemical that aims to pair Sumitomo's PLED materials to Kateeva's YieldJet OLED ink-jet printing platform.