OLED-Info: the OLED experts

Professor Homas Teets from the University of Houston has been awarded a $589,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award to explore new synthetic strategies for producing photoactive organometallic compounds.

Specifically, Teets will use the award in three research areas - efficient and long-lasting blue OLEd emitters, near-infrared (NIR) emitting compounds and photocatalysts for organic synthesis capable of light-induced electron transfer. The grant will also fund educational projects aimed at children from kindergarten through high school.

As Samsung, BOE and Visionox are already starting to produce foldable OLEDs (for Samsung Electronics, Huawei and Xiaomi and Nubia, respectively), AUO is not be left behind, and the Taiwan-based display maker announced it is working with clients to develop foldable OLEDs, with aims to start production in the second half of 2019.

AUO is developing an in-folding display (similar to Samsung's Galaxy Fold). According to CLSA, AUO is developing its foldable OLEDs in collaboration with Lenovo. AUO aims to produce these OLEDs in its 4.5-Gen AMOLED AFPD fab in Singapore - which commenced low-volume AMOLED production in 2013. AUO is currently producing mostly wearable glass-based OLEDs in its AFPD fab.

In January 2019 Xiaomi unveiled a video of its new prototype smartphone that uses a tri-foldable OLED display. According to a new report from China, Xiaomi plans to ship the device sometimes between April and June - with a price tag of $999.99.

If this is true, that's half the price of Samsung's Galaxy Fold (which will cost $1,980 in the US) and less than half of Huawei's Mate X (which will reportedly cost $2,600).

TCL unveiled that the company is developing a new hybrid display technology that uses a blue OLED emitter coupled with red and green QD emitters. All three emitter materials will be combined and printed using ink-jet printing technology. TCL calls this technology H-QLED and this could prove to be the technology of choice for TCL's future high-end emissive TV displays.

It seems as TCL believes that commercial-level red and green QD emitters will be achievable in the future, but blue QD emission will be more difficult to develop, and hence it will rely on OLED emitters. TCL did not disclose more details - but this R&D effort is being performed at the company's Juhua Printing platform.

Huawei adopted AMOLED displays in its P20 and P20 Pro smartphones, using panels produced by both BOE and LG Display. According to reports from China, the smartphone maker decided to adopt SDC's AMOLEDs in its updated smartphones, the P30 and P30 pro which will be launched soon.

We already reported that Samsung aims to increase its OLED production and to be more aggressive with its pricing. It seems as if this effort bears fruit. In addition it could be that Huawei was not satisfied with some of the LGD display quality issues being reported by P20 users.

LG announced its 2019 OLED TV range in January 2019, and now the company announced the pricing and availability of its upcoming TVs for all models - except the rollable OLED TV R and the 88" 8K OLED Z9.The "entry-level" OLED C9 will cost $2,499 for the 55" model (will be available in April), $3,499 for the 65" model (April) and $6,999 for the 77" model (May) . The OLED E9 TVs will cost $3,299 for the 55" model (June) and $4,299 for the 65" model (April).

Last month Samsung unveiled its first foldable OLED device, the Galaxy Fold - with its inside-folding 7.3" 1536 x 2152 Infinity Flex AMOLED display. The GFold is not shipping yet - but according to Bloomberg, Samsung is already developing two more foldable devices.

One of the two devices will look like a clamshell phone (an inside-folding OLED, but with a different form factor) - and the second will fold outside, in a similar fashion to Huawei's Mate X. The clamshell phone will be unveiled towards the end of 2019, or early in 2019. The out-folding device seems to be closer to commercialization and Samsung has already produced prototypes as it considered using this design in the first generation Galaxy Fold.