June 2016

The premier display industry conference, SID DisplayWeek 2016 took place at the end of May 2016 in San Francisco. This was a very interesting trade show, and OLEDs too center stage as the technology matures and is set to become the leading display technology in the near future. We published several posts following our meetings and booth visits at SID:

• LG Display: several new OLED technologies, and the amazing 77" Signature OLED TV
• Samsung Display: rollable OLED demonstration
• Samsung Display: healthier bio-blue OLED prototypes
• Samsung Display: 806 PPI AMOLEDs for VR applications
• Samsung Display: new automotive-bound transparent and mirror OLEDs
• Samsung Display: laptop-bound AMOLED displays
• Japan Display: flexible OLED display prototypes
• BOE Display: several new OLED prototypes
• TianMa: flexible and rigid OLED prototypes
• SEL: TR-Hybrid OLED/RLCD display
• E-Ink: Beautiful new color e-paper displays
• nVerPix: CNT-based OLET display prototype
• Kateeva: $88 million to advance its ink-jet printing system
• Kyulux: advancing fast to commercialize TADF emitters
• Solomon Systech: AMOLED and OLED lighting drivers
• Futaba: automotive and flexible PMOLEDs on display

Kateeva recently announced a large $88 million Series-E funding round, and the ink-jet equipment maker today announced that Ink-Jet guru Eli Vronsky has been promoted to the company's Chief Product Officer.

During our recent visit to San Francisco, we caught up with Kateeva’s executive team on a break from their presentations on inkjet printing for flexible OLEDs. Chief Product Officer Eli Vronsky gave us an update, as well as an overview of the company’s product strategy.

Digitimes Research expects that Samsung Display will remain the leader in mobile-device AMOLED displays, and the Korean company will increase its AMOLED shipments to 560 million panels in 2019.

Samsung Electronics will remain the company's largest AMOLED customer, but most of the growth in AMOLED shipments will come from other clients. SDC will ship 239 million AMOLEDs to Samsung Electronics in 2016, and this will grow to 290 million units in 2019.

Universal Display announced that it acquired BASF's entire OLED IP portfolio, for 87 Euro million (about $96 million). BASF's IP portfolio, representing 15 years of R&D, includes over 500 issues and pending patents around the world in 86 patent families - mostly regarding phosphorescent OLED materials and technologies. BASF’s OLED portfolio has an average lifetime of 10 years.

UDC says that BASF's patents will help the company develop and deliver an all-phosphorescent emissive stack. Specifically, UDC is believing that this will help the company develop commercial blue emissive systems. Including the new BASF patents, UDC will have over 4,000 issued and pending patents

A few years ago, Researchers at Exeter developed a new material called GraphExeter, which is made from compressed ferric chloride molecules between two sheets of graphene. This material has interesting properties, and recently the researchers started to study it as an electrode material for electroluminescent devices.

The researchers now report that GraphExeter is indeed effective as such an electrode - performing better than pure graphene. In fact, they state that it is capable of high luminosity - brighter than pure graphene by almost 50%. It's not clear exactly if they used this electrode on an OLED or on an EL lighting panel, but these are certainly interesting results.

The Fraunhofer FEP, as part of its flex+ project, launched a new idea competition called flexMED. Fraunhofer is aiming to collect ideas for applications that combine flexible electronics and medicine and healthcare.

You can submit your ideas until July 31st, and the three winner will receive €3,000 in total. The Fraunhofer team says that they are looking for innovative ideas that leverage diverse possibilities of flexible electronics. They would especially value ideas that contribute to well-being, recovery and cure of patients.

We're happy to announce a new market report: OLED for VR and AR. This report, brought to you by the world's leading OLED experts, is a comprehensive guide to OLED displays for the VR and AR markets. OLEDs have a bright future in VR and AR - and our new report discusses the future of these two emerging and fast-growing markets.

Reading this report, you'll learn all about:

• Why OLEDs are adopted in almost all VR HMDs
• What kind of displays are required for VR and AR applications
• What the future holds for the VR and AR markets
• Current and future VR and AR systems

The report also includes:

• VR/AR market forecasts from leading analysts
• VR and AR OLED companies overview
• Datasheets and details on leading OLED VR microdisplays
• Free updates for a year

In early 2016, Kyushu University in Japan spun-off a new start-up called Kyulux to commercialize the TADF emitters developed at the University. A few months later, Kyulux raised $13.5 million (from LG, Samsung, Japan Display and JOLED).

We have met with Kyulux's team at SID 2016, who updated us that the company is progressing fast on the way to commercialize those TADF emitters. The first products to be ready are green and yellow emitters. Kyulux says that its Hyper-fluorescence TADF emitters offer a superior performance compared to PHOLED emitters (in both intensity and color purity) - and they should also be priced lower - so the company aims to provide a viable alternative to UDC's emitters in the near future.

LG lowered the price of some of its new 2016 OLED TV. The entry-level 55" OLEDC6 (curved) and the 55" OLEDB6 (flat) now costs $2,799 - down from $2,999.

LG also shaved off $500 from its higher end 65" OLEDE6 - which now costs $5,499.

The first-generation Apple Watch uses a flexible OLED display, exclusively produced by LG Display. Digitimes now says that Apple is developing a Micro-LED panel to be used in a future Watch - to be released in H2 2017.

Apple acquired Micro-LED developer LuxVuew in May 2014, and according to this report has setup a micro-LED research lab in Taiwan in 2015.