OLED-Info: the OLED experts

Samsung has reportedly signed an exclusive deal with Korea's Dowoo Insis to supply ultra-thin glass (UTG) to be adopted in future foldable OLED devices. As part of the deal, Samsung Ventures invested 12 billion Won ($10 million USD) in Dowoo, who will only be able to sell its glass to Samsung.

According to reports from Korea, Dowoo can currently produce around 500,000 UTG units per month - which should be enough to support Samsung's foldable OLED needs in 2020. With the new investment, Dowoo plans to increase its production capacity in the future. Dowoo's display glass is less than 100um thick - and can be made thinner up to 30 um.

Motorola announced the Razr 2019, a clamshell-style smartphone that features a 6.2" 2142x876 (21:9) foldable AMOLED display that folds inside. There's also a regular external 2.7" 600x800 AMOLED used when the phone is closed.

This seems, at least to me, to be a beautiful design which may appeal to more consumers compared to the larger foldable phones we have seen until today that open up to a tablet-style device. The Razr is also the cheapest foldable OLED phone yet announced at $1,500 (it will ship in January 2020).

The Fraunhofer first demonstrated its bi-directional OLED microdisplays in 2009 - these display use photodetectors embedded between the OLED pixels to enable unique applications such as eye-tracking and more.

The Fraunhofer now suggests a new use for such displays. The BiClean project looked into the possibility of embedding bi-directional OLED microdisplays in solar panels or pipes, to detect contamination in early stages. The display project light at different colors, and the photodetectors can sense the surface status in real time - and so it is possible to know whether it is necessary to clean the surface.

Researchers from RUDN University in Russia have synthesized new OLED emitter compounds. These compounds seem to be phosphorescent emitters, based on copper and silver atoms.

The researchers say that the compound platform they created can lead to efficient and cost-effective OLED emitters, and also offer a special molecular geometry that can enable freedom-of-design for developers.

Sharp announced that it has developed, in collaboration with NHK, a 30" rollable 4K OLED panel on an IGZO backplane. This is a direct emission OLED, which sharp says is the world's largest ever produced (LG's OLEDs all use color filters).

Sharp's OLED panel is deposited on a thin-film substrate, and has a thickness of 0.5 mm. The display uses NHK's signal processing and panel driving technologies to "improve the brightness uniformity and video clarity".

In February 2019 Samsung started to produce 15.6" 4K AMOLEDs for laptops - and recently the company also started to produce 13.3" 4K AMOLEDs, already adopted by HP for a new laptop.

Last week SDC hosted an OLED for IT companies, and over 300 employees from laptop producers in Taiwan (including HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Asus) attended the event. During the event, Samsung says that it will add a new OLED panel to its lineup, a 13.3" FHD model - which will be cheaper than the 4K model which will help expand OLED adoption in more laptop models in 2020.