November 2022

In May 2022, Visionox announced plans to build a 11 billion Yuan ($1.6 billion USD) flexible and foldable OLED module production line, in Hefei. Yesterday the company signed the formal agreement with the local government and kickstarted the project.

According to reports from China, the new factory will have a yearly capacity of around 26 million modules in sizes ranging from 6-inch to 12-inch, although the company says it will also produce wearable OLED display modules at this fab, so there will be smaller sizes as well.

Reports from Korea suggest that Meta (Facebook) is in talks with both Samsung Display and LG Display, regarding the supply of OLED microdisplays and microLED microdisplays for its future AR and VR glasses.

According to the reports, dozens of executives from Meta have met with executives from LG Display and Samsung Display, and the discussions are still ongoing. According to other reports, Meta plans to use OLED displays in its upcoming VR glasses, and MicroLEDs in AR glasses that will hit the market at around 2026.

In December 2021, LG Display unveiled its OLED.EX (Evolution and eXperience) technology, that are based on deuterium-enhanced compounds to increase brightness by up to 30%. The company now announced that it has completed upgrading all of its WOLED TV production lines (in Korea and China) to EX technology, and all new panels will use the new materials.

LG Display says to develop the OLED.EX technology, it has converted the hydrogen elements present in organic light emitting elements into stable deuterium. LGD extracts the deuterium compounds from water, and after stabilization, the compounds allow the OLED devices to be brighter - and also last longer.

Researchers from Korea's KAIST institute developed a fabric-based wearable patch that uses a blue OLED device to treat jaundice in newborns.

The researchers say that phototherapy is the most widely used treatment for neonatal jaundice, as it is a safe and effective to transform the bilirubin that is accumulated in the body and release it. When the bilirubin concentration is too high, the doctors treat newborns with blue light in an incubator. The new device can be used to treat high levels of bilirubin, without the need for an incubator.

Ireland-based RAPT will host a free online webinar on November 29, to explain the company's OLED touch technology and its future potential. You can subscribe to the webinar here.

RAPT developed a novel touch technology, frustrated total internal reflection (“FTIR”) that is specifically designed for self-emissive displays such as OLED displays and overcomes the major challenges that OLED displays poses for traditional touch technologies.

Market research firm Omdia says that the global smartphone market is shrinking, and is set to fall 18% in 2022 to 1.425 billion units. LTPS AMOLED display shipments will decline 19% compared to 2021 to 44 million units (LCDs will decline even faster at 26%).

The only segmented that Omdia says is growing is the LTPO AMOLED one, with a fast growth of 94% in 2022 (to 148 million units), and will continue to grow in 2023 (25%).

OLED driver IC developer MagnaChip has launched its first power management integrated circuit (PMIC) specifically designed for IT devices with OLED displays.

A PMIC supplies power to electronic devices, and it is an important component in mobile devices to optimize power consumption. The newly-designed PMIC communicates with a system by using an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) interface and can control functions such as output voltage control, ON/OFF block, output voltage sequence management, and more. It supports variable refresh rate OLED displays, from 60Hz to 240Hz.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, led by Dr Alex Gillett, have studied the effect of host materials (the dielectric environment) on the performance of TADF OLED emitters, and specifically how the dipole moment of the host material can affect the rISC rate of the TADF component.

The impact of the toluene solvent dynamics on the riSC process of TXO-TPA (left: TXO-TPA in an explicit toluene solvent environment, right: TXO-TPA in vacuum)

The researchers tested several TADF OLED materials, and in some of these materials, the effect of different host materials can be quite dramatic. It is believed that commercial TADF devices could benefit from tuning the host and emitter combination to achieve higher performance, including a better efficiency roll-off as conversion of triplets into singlets can be accelerated.

Toray Research Center (TRC) is now hosting online webinars focused on display technologies. TRC, who supplies technical analysis and support for R&D and manufacturing, invites you to attend the online lectures at no cost, to learn more about OLED, microLED and QD technologies and analysis of OLED devices.

The webinars include recorded presentations, which will be available online up until to November 22. You can register for the webinars here.

The webinar will include three different presentations:

• OLED dopant ratio for efficient emission
• Laser-based processes for microLED production, analysis method to evaluate chips after transfer
• Degradation analysis of QD-LED devices

KT&T, established in 2020 as a spin-off from INT Tech with an investment of $143 million, has developed an OLED microdisplay that achieved a brightness of 12,000 nits, which is the highest brightness OLED microdisplay ever developed.

The new panel is based on KT&T's own uNEEDXR technology, which is a direct-emission (no color filters) design. The display achieves very high brightness and high efficiency.