WRGB - Page 9

During a conference in Korea, LG Display's OLED technical strategy team leader Lim Joo-son said that the company's WRGB technology does not place any limits to the size of the OLED TVs they can make, and once the M2 goes into operation, the company will be able to produce 110" TVs.

LG Electronics 77-inch OLED TV prototype

LG also managed to increase the pixel density, and can now produce 8K (7680x4320) panels - but they admit that the smaller aperture in such panels limits the lifetime and they urgently need to develop longer lasting OLED materials.

In December 2013 Skyworth announced its first OLED TV, and now the company announced it finally started to mass produce the TV. The Tianchi E980 is a 55" curved Full-HD OLED TV that supports Skyworth's Tianchi 4 OS offering smart capabilities. The E980 uses LG Display's WRGB OLED panel.

Interestingly, when Skyworth announced the E980 and E990 OLED TVs back in December 2013, the TVs were flat (see photo below). But it seems the company finally adopted a curved design. You can see LG's OLED branding displayed on the panel of the E980 below.

So CES 2014 is now over, and one thing is certain - at least in that event, LG is making a much stronger push into OLED TVs than their arch rival Samsung. While Samsung only showed new 55" bendable 4K OLED prototypes, LG showed many prototypes and two new products, including a 77" curved 4K OLED TV that they plan to launch soon for $29,999.

But it seems that it's not just about TVs on display at CES. A Samsung visual-display VP says that there are significant OLED manufacturing issues and they only expect cheap OLED TVs to enter the market in 3 or 4 years. LG on the other hand sees a "rapid shift into OLED TVs". The market will remain small in 2014 (30,000 to 50,000 units) but LG expects the market to ramp up quickly.

There are reports from China that Skyworth is set to release their first OLED TV next week (December 5). The company sent out invitations to reporters for the launch event:

According to one report, Skyworth will use LG Display's WRGB panels. The second report actually says Skyworth are releasing a "Samsung OLED TV", but they still say it is an WRGB panel so this may be just a mistake.

China's BOE Display has been discussing its 5.5-Gen LTPS fab in Ordos for a long time. Today BOE announced that it finally approves the AMOLED line in that fab, and will begin construction soon in a 22 billion yuan investment ($3.6 billion). The fab's capacity will be 54,000 glass substrates a month and will produce small and medium sized panels.

BOE Ordos 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab

According to earlier reports, the fab will begin producing LTPS LCDs soon (by the end of 2013). It's not clear whether the AMOLED line is a new line or whether BOE will convert one of the LCD lines to AMOLED. It is expected that BOE will only start mass producing AMOLEDs by the end of 2014. BOE's AMOLED fab will use high-resolution FMM deposition and a WRGB architecture. We know that BOE is also developing ink-jet printing technology but this will most likely take more time to commercialize.

Taiwan has a large display industry, but in recent years it seems that it is lagging behind Korea, Japan and China in AMOLED technologies. We asked a local industry expert to check out the three main Taiwanese AMOLED companies (AUO, Innolux and RiTDisplay), and now we post on his updates.

AUO

As we reported already, AUO started producing AMOLEDs in their 4.5-Gen fab in Singapore after years of delays. According to our source, AUO is actually only producing samples. Those 5" 720p (295 ppi) panel samples have been been submitted to a company based in China. Earlier reports suggested AUO is going to supply HTC and Sony but it appears these two companies will keep using LCDs for now.

A few days ago we reported about SEL's new 13.5" QFHD (3840x1260, 326 PPI) flexible OLED prototype. Now DigInfo published a video showing this new OLED panel and several prototypes showing how it can be used to design curved displays:

SEL's OLEDs use a WRGB (white OLEDs with color filters) architecture and and it uses SEL's CAAS-OS (C-Axis Aligned Crystalline Oxide Semiconductor) substrate.

During the FPD International 2013, SEL unveiled a new 13.5" QFHD (3840x1260, 326 PPI) flexible OLED prototype. This is a WRGB panel (white OLEDs with color filters) and it uses a CAAS-OS (C-Axis Aligned Crystalline Oxide Semiconductor) substrate.

Toshiba was also showing a flexible panel - a 10.2" WUXGA (1920x1200, 223 PPI) WOLED panel on an IGZO backplane. This seems to be the same panel shown at SID 2013 in May 2013. Finally, Yamaga University's Research Center for Organic Electronics (ROEL) unveiled new flexible OLED technologies, including soluble organic-TFT based panels (on PET).

China's BOE Display is building a 5.5-Gen LTPS fab in Ordos by the end of 2013. This fab will first produce LTPS LCDs, but BOE wants to switch it to AMOLED production. According to OLEDNet, during the FPD International 2013, BOE's Dawei Wang (their flexible technology R&D director) said that in addition to the 5.5-Gen line in Ordos, they are also working towards a Gen-8 Oxide-TFT line in Hefei.

BOE Ordos 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab

This new line will use high-resolution FMM deposition and a WRGB architecture. We know that BOE is also developing ink-jet printing technology, it's not clear from OLEDNet's article whether printing technologies are also planned for the Hefei line.

In October 7, LG Display announced that it will soon start mass producing flexible OLEDs. Today we have talked with LG Display officials, and they confirmed that mass production has indeed started. The company currently makes 6" panels that weigh just 7.2 grams are are only 0.44 mm thick (only a third of the thickness of LG's thinnest mobile LCDs).

LGD updates us that the current flexible OLED production capacity in their 4.5-Gen line is 6,000 substrates a month (previously we reported that capacity will be 12,000 substrates). Perhaps the rest of the capacity is dedicated to R&D. In any case 6,000 substrates a month means almost 400,000 6" panels - assuming 100% yields. Of course yields will be lower but it seems that LGD indeed means to produce a fair share of displays and it'll be interesting how they (or other companies) adopt these panels in products.