The OLED-Info newsletter, May 2017
Published: Wed, 05/03/17
Is Samsung entering the Micro-LED market?
Micro-LED is a promising display technology as it has the potential to enable brighter and more efficient displays compared to OLEDs. It also may be cheaper, but there are still technical challenges to overcome and analysts estimate that micro-LEDs will not be commercialized before 2020. Micro-LED seems to be getting more and more attention lately.
According to an industry insider in Taiwan, Samsung is set to acquire Taiwan's PlayNitride for the company's micro-LED technology for around $150 million. Our inside says that ">Samsung aims to develop micro-LED based displays for VR applications, but may also look into micro-LED based TVs using PlayNitride's technology. Taiwan-based PlayNitride was established in 2015 to research and develop Nitride related materials and applications. The fabless company is now focusing on GaN based MicroLEDs - it is branding its technology as PixelLED displays. According to reports PlayNitride aims to start producing micro-LED chips towards the end of 2017.
Samsung may be also looking to become Apple's Micro-LED supplier. Apple acquired micro-LED developer LuxVue in May 2014 and has not updated on the technology since, but according to reports Apple is looking into producing small micro-LED displays for future Watch wearables - some say Apple aims to start producing low-volume micro-LED displays by the end of 2017.
Tianma starts mass producing flexible OLEDs
TianMa Micro-Electronics announced that its 6-Gen LTPS AMOLED fab in Wuhan, China, is now starting to produce panels. This is the first 6-Gen AMOLED line in China to enter production. The new fab will produce both rigid and flexible OLEDs.
According to reports TianMa is focusing on VR and AR devices, wearable devices and foldable devices. Last month TianMa demonstrated three OLED panels - a 5.5" FHD panel, a 5-inch FHD panel and a flexible 5.46" panel, so it's likely that the smartphone market is also in focus. If TianMa will indeed start offering flexible OLEDs it can be great news to device makers that seek flexible OLEDs as currently the only producers are Samsung and LGD (with limited volume) which makes it hard to acquire such displays. TianMa joins China-based OLED makers Everdisplay, BOE, Truly and Visionox.
Updates on Apple's OLED iPhone
As Apple is getting closer to introduce its first OLED iPhones, rumors are flying high. In early April the Nikkei Asian Review said that Apple ordered 70 million 5.2" flexible OLED displays from SDC, while IHS estimates that SDC actually plant to produce 95 million OLEDs for Apple in 2017 as it expects even higher demand from Apple.
Apple does not like to be tied up to a single supplier, and it is already looking for another OLED maker to supply it with flexible OLEDs starting in 2018. Business Korea claims that Apple has reached out o LG Display with an aim to secure LG's flexible OLED capacity for Apple's 2018 phones. According to ETNews Google is also in talks with LGD as it wants to secure OLED capacity for its own Pixel 2 smartphone.
A report in China, meanwhile, claims that technical issues related to the curved OLED production and the 3D sensing system may force Apple to delay the launch of its OLED iPhone.
Samsung readies 7-Gen AMOLED line
According to reports from Korea, Samsung has started construction of a new flexible OLED fab, which will be called the A4 line. This will be Samsung's first Gen-7 line as the company is aiming to expand its technology gap over its upcoming OLED competitors who are all building Gen-6 line.
A Gen-7 line substrate is 1870x2200 mm in size - as opposed to 1500x1800 mm for Gen-6. This means that you can produce more displays per substrate and price per screen is lower. Scaling up evaporation OLED production is not so easy, but it seems that Samsung managed to solve its technologies hurdles - mainly the FMM metal masks and the LTPS annealing process.Merck: printed and evaporation OLED efficiencies on par
According to Merck, the efficiencies of its soluble OLED emitters are now comparable to state-of-the-art vapor-processed devices. Merck also suggests a move from an evaporated blue common layer device architecture to a printed blue.
Merck is stepping up its efforts in the OLED market as it aims to become one of the leading suppliers of OLED materials by 2018. In September 2016 the company inaugurated its €30 Million OLED materials production plant in Darmstadt, Germany, which provides a fivefold increase in the company's OLED materials production capacity.
LG's unveils world's largest OLED lighting installation
LG Display has put on an ambitious OLED lighting display at Euroluce which is a part of the Milan Design Week. LG actually has two booths, with the first one designed by Tokujin Yoshioka. Tokujin's installation is called Wall of the Sun, and it uses 30,000 of LGD's OLED lighting panels installed on the wall.
This makes this installation the world's largest ever OLED lighting installation, which is double in size compared to Konica Minolta's OLED Tulip installation from 2015. This seems to be a very impressive display. The installation also includes 15 chairs embedded with LGD's OLED TV panels.
LG Display's second booth which you can see below demonstrates several OLED lamps designed by Ross Lovegrove and others. Those beautiful pendant luminaires are called "Medusa" and these were inspired by underwater creatures, apparently, and take advantage of the one of the key advantages of OLED lighting - the flexibility. LG D is exhibiting a total of 15 Medusa lamps.
TADF OLED updates
TADF emitter technology is starting to attract a lot of attention as it seems to be of the promising paths towards lower-cost OLED emitters and high-efficiency blue OLED emitters. On April 10th we posted an interview with Cynora's CMO to better understand the company's technology and business. Cynora is focusing on a blue emitter and its CMO says that the commercialization of Cynora's blue TADF material is planned for the end of 2017.
Last week the EU launched a new 4-million Euro project called HyperOLED with an aim to develop materials and matching device architectures for high-performance, hyperfluorescence TADF OLED emitters. HyperOLED is coordinated by Merck, and the project partners include MicroOLED and the Fraunhofer IOF institute. The project aims to integrate multiple blue and white stack unit prototypes that will be integrated into a high-brightness OLED microdisplay based on MicroOLED's 0.38" WVGA backplane.
There are two TADF events coming up. First up is the International TADF Symposium in Germany in September 2017. Germany-based TADF developer Cynora was kind enough to offer a special 15% registration discount to OLED-Info readers . Read more about this discount here. Kyushu University in Japan is hosting the 2nd International TADF Workshop in July 2017. Sponsored by Kyulux, this event will bring speakers from LG Display, Dow Chemical and dozens other from Universities all over the world.
On the research side, several new TADF research papers have been announced by SID and will be presented at DisplayWeek 2017. Click here to read more about these papers from Kyulux, Cynora, Yamagata University, Hyung Hee University and the National Taiwan University. Finally for this month, researchers at the Technical University of Dresden developed a method to produce polymer TADF emitters for the first time.
Dell's OLED monitor is back
In early 2016 Dell announced the world's first OLED monitor, the 30" 4K Ultrasharp UP3017Q. This interesting and innovative monitor was supposed to be shipping in March 2016 for $4,999 - but that did not happen, and reports suggested that Dell canceled this monitor as the company was unhappy with the image quality of that OLED panel - especially the amount of color drift that it displayed when you viewed the monitor from the sides.
But Dell now started shipping the UP3017Q, and the price is set at $3,499, or $1,500 lower than the original price Dell announced in 2016. Hopefully other companies will follow suit to release OLED monitors as well. The UP3017Q features a 4K resolution (3840x2160, 147 PPI), a refresh rate of 60Hz, viewing angle of 178 degrees (both vertical and horizontal) and a brightness of 300 cd/m2. The monitor supports mDP (1.2), HDMI (2) and USB type C.
Kopin secures OLED microdisplay capacity
In January 2017 Kopin unveiled its first OLED microdisplay, the 1-inch 120 Hz 2k x 2k Lightning panel, and later reported on an "overwhelming" reaction and a first design win. Kopin now announced that it reached agreements with both OLiGHTEK and BOE Technology to meet its production needs.
In the near-term, Kopin's Lightning OLED microdisplays will be produced at OLiGHTEK's Kumnin (Yunnan) fab. Kopin and OLiGHTEK will jointly purchase an advanced production OLED deposition line to be installed within OLiGHTEK’s facility as it will need to expand its production capacity. The new line will be ready for production by the end of 2017. Kopin will be entitled to 50% of the new line output. For the longer term, Kopin signed a separate agreement with both BOE and OLiGHTEK.
In March 2017 BOE and OLiGHTEK announced that they will establish a new OLED microdisplay production facility in Kunming. This will be the world's largest OLED-on-silicon production line that will have an annual production capacity of a million OLED microdisplays. Total investment will be $167 million USD, with most of the money coming from BOE (76.5%) and OLiGHTEK (20%). It is not clear what is the nature of Kopin's agreement for this fab, but it's likely that Kopin secured some capacity in this future fab as well.
The new fab will have a monthly capacity of 45,000 substrates and will start trial production of small to medium sized flexible OLEDs in Q2 2019.
DisplayMate says that this display is the most innovative and high performance smartphone display that they have ever lab tested - and it earned DisplayMate’s highest ever A+ grade.
Google reportedly offered to invest $872 million USD as it seeks to adopt LG's flexible OLEDs in future Pixel phone devices.
Aixtron announced that it received a purchase order from a major Asian OLED display manufacturer for an OLED deposition system to be installed at the customer site within the second half of 2017.
Researchers from the Korea-based ETRI produced the largest OLED panel to date (370 x 470 mm) that uses graphene electrodes.
Reports from Korea suggest LG Display has secured a flexible OLED supply deal to Xiaomi, for the company's next-gen flagship phone.
Customers in Korea are complaining that the Samsung S8 AMOLED has a red tint... will Samsung face a new crisis?
Skyworth unveiled two new OLED TVs, including one that resembles LG's wallpaper OLEDW7
Our display supplier in China has just received a large quantity of AUO's square 1.63-inch 320x320 AMOLED displays (with the touch layer), following a cancelled project that had already bought these panels. Those AMOLEDs are now offered at less than half their normal cost!
Sony's XBR-A1E is now shipping, $1,000 cheaper than first announced - the 55-inch model costs $3,999 while the 65-inch model costs $5,499. The 77-inch model is not shipping or priced yet.
An entry-level smartphone with a 5-inch 720x1280 AMOLED display
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