OLED production - Page 18

Japan Display says it is developing a new OLED production technology that will enable higher resolution and higher efficiency OLED displays, and the company is in talks with potential customers regarding a joint investment in producing next-generation OLEDs.

According to JDI's CEO, the company is using a new manufacturing technology that is different to the evaporation method currently used by OLED makers. It is not clear what is meant by that - it could be an inkjet-printing technology (but achieving high resolution for smartphone displays with inkjet printing is a challenge) or something like OVPD or OVJP - or a new technology developed in-house at JDI.

It came to our attention that a couple of months ago, Taiwan-based INT Tech signed an agreement to establish an OLED display fab in the city of Taizhou in Zhejiang province, China. The total investment in the project will be 1 billion Yuan (around $143 million USD) and the local government will support the project.

INT Tech developed a proprietary glass-based high pixel density OLED technology - which enables ultra high-resolution displays on glass TFT backplanes. The company is aiming to produce lower-cost and higher-performance microdisplays for the AR/XR markets.

DSCC posted an interesting article detailing their estimates for the production costs and prices of choice flexible and foldable AMOLED displays, in China and in Korea.

We'll start with the chart above, which compares the prices and quotes of several flexible OLEDs produced by Samsung in Korea. DSCC says that as the profitability of Samsung's OLED business is highly dependent on fab utilization, it is currently losing money on this business as the yields in its flexible OLED lines are only 38% - and fixed costs such as personnel and depreciation cannot be decreased. Having said that, DSCC sees higher utilization in the next two quarters, which will result in profitability for SDC's OLED unit.

In July 2019, LG Display announced an additional investment of $2.5 billion in its upcoming P10 10.5-Gen OLED TV fab in Paju. In June 2019 it was reported that LG display has started to install some of the Oxide-TFT deposition equipment. According to LG's original plans, mass production at the P10 fab was supposed to begin in 2021 or 2022, but this was later delayed to 2023.

It is now reported that LG Display has decided to delay the mass production at the P10 fab to 2025 or 2026 - this pretty much means the project is now on hold. LG Display is currently seeing lower demand for OLED TV panels, due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

In 2017 Tianma started producing rigid and flexible OLEDS at the company's 6-Gen fab in Wuhan. Later in 2018 the company announced plans to construct the 2nd phase of the Wuhan AMOLED fab.

According to the OLED Association, Tianma is now delaying the phase 2 of this fab, due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Originally Tianma aimed to start production in Q1 or Q2 2020, but this will now be delayed to Q3 2020. The 2nd phase adds a capacity 15,000 monthly 6-Gen substrates (in addition to the 15,000 substrates already in production).

Samsung Display is updating its A3 flexible OLED production line, to support two new technologies. The TFT process is being updated, for some of the capacity, to Apple's LTPO technology. LTPO is currently used in Apple's Watch displays, but next-generation iPhones will adopt it as well.

According to UBI, Samsung will dedicate 75,000 monthly substrates to produce smartphone LTPO displays. According to some reports, Samsung has also developed its own backplane technology which is similar to LTPO, it could be that some of this capacity will be used for Samsung's own displays.

LG Display's original plan was to start producing OLED TV panels at its 8.5-Gen OLED fab in Guangzhou in October 2019, but following some technical issues, production was pushed back, several times. The latest report suggested that production will only begin in Q3 2020 - due to the Coronavirus pandemic, and lower market demand.

Business Korea reports today that LGD finally started to produce panels in the Guangzhou fab - 48" OLED TV panels. It seems as if LGD has not achieved mass production yet, but some panels are already being produced. Mass production will begin, according to BK, later this month.

LG Display's original plan was to start producing OLED TV panels at its 8.5-Gen OLED fab in Guangzhou in October 2019, but the company faced technical issues, pushed back production to the end of January 2020 - but fixing these issues took longer than expected.

The CoronaVirus outbreak caused LGD further delays, and mass production was again delayed to 'early' Q2 2020. The latest news from Korea suggests that now LGD has pushed back production in the Guangzhou fab to Q3 2020. The cause of these delays, is again yield issues, slow engineering work due to the Coronavirus isolation - and lower demand in the market (which seems to suggest that LGD is not in a rush to begin production).

Korean media reports that due to a fire at Samsung's A3 OLED production fab in Asan, the company had to shut down the production at some of the lines. Luckily, there were no casualties.

Samsung Displays says that this won't effect the supply of OLED panels, but the extent of the damage is not yet determined.

Digitimes reports that TCL's CSoT is planning to build a new flexible OLED production line in Wuhan. The T5 line is still only at an early planning stage, but investment could reach about $1.4 billion.

The T5 line will be CSoT's 2nd flexible OLED line - it's current T4 line (which has a monthly capacity of 45,000 6-Gen substrates) started production in 2019.