OLED production - Page 10

Japan-based Dai Nippon Printing (DNP), the world's leading OLED FMM mask producer, is investing about 20 billion Yen (about $140 USD million) to expand the production capacity at its Kurosaki plant situated in Kitakyushu City.

DNP says that the new FMM line is expected to begin production in the first half of 2024, and will produce large-area FMM masks, suitable for the 8-Gen lines now being commissioned by the OLED industry to enhance production for IT displays. This new capacity will more than double DNP's FMM production capacity.

According to UBI Research, Samsung Display has decided to produce QD-OLED panels at its upcoming 8.7-Gen A5 production line. The company IT display strategy will be to produce QD-OLED panels for monitor application (27-inch displays, at first) and tandem RGB panels for smaller IT displays (tablets, laptops).

A 34-inch QD-OLED monitor (Dell Alienware)

Samsung is looking for design wins with Apple for both its display architectures - the larger QD-OLED panels for Apple's monitors and the smaller sized panels for its tablets.

UBI Research estimates hat shipments of OLED panels for IT applications (tablets, monitors and laptops) will reach 48.8 million units by 2027, growing from around 9.5 million units in 2022 (a CAGR of 39%).

In 2022-2024, the main application for OLED panels is in laptops, but this will change from 2025 and onwards as tablets will also become a dominant applications (as Apple will start adoping OLEDs in its high-end iPads).

According to reports in Korea, LG Display is thinking about building a new automotive OLED production line, at its now-closed LCD P4.5 production site in Gumi, Korea.

It is not clear what is LGD's current status with this project, as one reports suggests LGD has already started to order equipment, while another says the design of the new fab is not complete yet, and that LGD did not make a final decision.

According to reports from Korea, LG Display decided to halt OLED TV production at its 8.5-Gen fab in Paju, for about a month or maybe more, as demand for OLED TV panel has declined.

It seems as if LGD's inventories are increasing - in fact according to the report, LGD's inventory at the first half of the year increased 73.4% compared to the same period last year. OLED TV makers like LG Electronics and Sony are also seeing their own TV inventories up.

OLED makers are gearing up to increase production of IT OLED panels, used in laptops, monitors and tablets. Towards that, analysts expects over 10 8.5-Gen OLED lines under consideration now in the industry. This drive is led by Samsung Display that confirmed is is building a 8-Gen (2200x2500 mm) OLED production line, that will begin production in 2024.

A 8-Gen (or actually 8.5-Gen) fab uses 2200x2500mm glass substrates. According to a new report in Korea, Samsung actually decided to adopt a larger glass - a 8.7-Gen 2290x2620 mm. The ~10cm increase will increase production efficiency by around 9%, but this means that current 8.5-Gen LCD equipment that Samsung hoped to use will not be usable any more.

This is a sponsored post by Merck

Merck inaugurated its first OLED production site in China, that has now begun operations, and it joins Merck's China-based production of liquid crystals and photoresist materials.

Merck's local OLED production will give Merck's China-based and Asia-based customers easier and faster access to OLED materials and a stable and more flexible supply chain.

A few months ago, Japan Display (JDI) announced that it has developed a "historic breakthrough in display technology" - a new OLED deposition process which they refer to as eLEAP, that is said to be cost effective and can be used to create freeform OLEDs that are brighter, more efficient, and longer lasting compared to OLEDs produced using mask evaporation (FMM).

According to a new report from Korea, Samsung Display is interested in JDI's new technique. Interestingly the report shows conflicting views within SDC - some are interested in adopting this new technology, especially at SDC's upcoming 8-Gen IT OLED production line, while others are more interested in preventing SDC's competitors (JDI, or others?) from using it, perhaps by pressuring OLED equipment makers to not offer needed equipment to JDI.

This is a sponsored post by INFICON

OLED producers have been struggling with the deposition of magnesium materials during the OLED production process. INFICON has developed high-level magnesium-sensitive crystals specifically for OLED deposition, that significantly shorten the initial time delay in magnesium monitoring, while maintaining high stability and reproducibility.

The following application note details INFICON crystals for OLED deposition, the development process, and the experiments the company performed to characterize and evaluate the crystal quality to make sure it offers the highest possible solution for the OLED industry.

Background

Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) is one of the most important INFICON products for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) and optical device fabrication, as well as for many other applications. The change in the QCM's resonance frequency due to mass loading by thin films allows it to be used as a surrogate for correlating the rate of the film thickness accumulation on a substrate. The design of INFICON High Precision Sensor Crystals was based upon many OLED manufacturers™ requirement of more stable crystals that are less prone to activity dips (instability in the activity signal) in controlling the deposition of OLED materials. The field performances of INFICON High Precision Sensor Crystals have shown to improve rate stability with nearly extinguished activity dips in terms of the number of occurrences as well as the magnitude when they rarely occur.

Last Month Samsung Display confirmed that Samsung is now building a 8-Gen (2200x2500 mm) OLED production line, that will begin production in 2024.

It is expected that the new line will mostly produce panels for IT devices (laptops and tablest) and also for automotive applications. Many believe that these applications will adopt tandem stack structure to increase brightness and lifetime. According to a new report, Samsung's new line will adopt a single-stack structure, and not a dual-stack one.