OLED-Info: the OLED experts

The US Department of Energy (DoE) awarded a $1 million project that aims to replace ITO with a metal-based micro-grid with an aim to improve the performance of OLED lighting panels.

This research project is led by Professor Paul Leu from the University of Pittsburgh and Texas-based Electroninks which provides the silver-based inks. Electroninks’ metal inks can cure at low temperatures, be printed into patterns, and has conductivity comparable to bulk metal. Using a new metal patterning technique that prints the metal grid directly on glass or plastic, it is possible to create micro-grids that can outperform ITO at a lower manufacturing cost.

In September 2019 Xiaomi unveiled a new "concept" smartphone, the Mi Mix Alpha, which uses a foldable OLED screen wrapped around the phone. Xiaomi said this phone will be produced in small quantities (with a price tag of around $2,800) and indeed it is now displaying it in its shop in Hong Kong:

The AMOLED display, produced by Visionox, is 7.92" in size with a resolution of 2088x2250 (388 PPI).

LG Electronics says that it shipped over 5 million OLED TVs since it began offering OLED TVs in 2013. LGE's OLED TV sales are accelerating and it is currently shipping an average of 100,000 OLED TVs each month.

According to earlier reports LGE has asked LGD to provide it with 2.5 million OLED TV panels in 2020. LGE's is the world's leader in OLED TVs, but it is not alone - there are 15 brands that currently offer OLED TVs, including Sony, Panasonic, Philips, Skyworth and Hisense.

Boeing's ecoDemonstrator is an innovation program that takes promising technologies and tests them in a real aircraft. The company chooses a different airplane each year to test the new technologies.

In 2019 Boeing chose a 777 aircraft, and installed several new technologies with an aim to test enhanced safety, reduced fuel consumption and noise - and also to make for a better passenger experience. In 2019 Boeing installed OLED displays as main displays and also in the ceiling. Boeing may adopt such OLEDs in future aircrafts.

Researchers from TU Dresden developed a novel memory device that is based on a combination of an OLED emitter and a metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) capacitor.

The so-called pinMOS device is a non-volatile memory-capacitor with high repeatability and reproducibility. pinMOS devices can store several states, since charges can be added or removed in controllable amounts. This device can also be controlled (read and write) both electrically and optically.

UBI Research posted an interesting note. The company says that rigid OLED shipments (237 million) command a 79.2% market share of the entire OLED smartphone market, up from 64.5% in 2018.

Display makers have mostly invested in flexible OLED production - but currently there is higher demand for the lower cost rigid OLEDs. All rigid OLED lines are currently in full capacity and UBI suggests that we may see some companies converting flexible OLED lines to rigid OLED production - or that we'll see new investments in rigid OLED production.

Sharp started producing flexible OLEDs in low volume in August 2018, and have adopted these displays in its own smartphones. According to report Sharp Sharp understands it cannot compete with Korean and Chinese companies with both technology and price and has halted smartphone OLED production (although it still develops advanced OLED technologies and will continue to produce OLEDs for other applications).

We now offer Sharp's flexible OLED displays at the OLED marketplace, at a clearance sale. These are high-end 6.18" 1440x2992 flexible AMOLED displays with on-cell touch, and we have 15,000 such panels available at a great price. Check out more information over at the OLED Marketplace, or contact us now.