Samsung Display starts ordering equipment for the Gen-6 A3 AMOLED line

OLEDNet posted an article stating that major equipment companies in Korea reported orders from Samsung Display (SDC). The manufacturing process equipment suggest that SDC is finally moving forward with its Gen-6 (1850x1500) AMOLED fab.

According to the report, SDC plans to complete the orders soon and wants to get it all by December 2014 and start mass producing in Q1 2015. The only major equipment orders left are for the encapsulation equipment. These may go to Veeco for their FAST-ALD systems, but we know that SDC is also looking at alternative approaches.

OLEDNet says that SDC will exclusively use this line for flexible (plastic-based) OLEDs, first targeting tablets (which is rather surprising as I'd assume they will start with smaller flexible devices such as wearable and phones). It's more likely that this will be a glass-based fab, indeed producing displays for tablets. In phase two, they will add more production lines and start making 65" OLED TV panels.

The nine orders publicly announced by Korean makers amount to about 220 billion won (around $215 million USD). An earlier report stated that the new fab will cost between $3 billion to $5 billion, with the first phase estimated at $2 billion.

Posted: Jul 22,2014 by Ron Mertens