August 2023

According to reports, the U.S. Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command has placed a $347 million order with Lockheed Martin for a specialized helmet for pilots of the F-35 fighter jet. The new helmet, developed in collaboration between Collins Aerospace and Elbit Systems, will feature an OLED microdisplay, to replace the currently-used LCDs.

In 2018, we reported that the current F-35 Joint Strike Fighter helmet uses an LCD microdisplay (produced by Kopin), which suffers from a green glow (from the LED backlighting) that prevents pilots from seeing a carrier's lights at night. In addition, the current LCD display suffers from optical blooming - light that spills from lit pixels to their adjacent area. Following these issues, the US Navy started testing OLED microdisplays to replace the LCD.

Apple first VR headset, the Apple Vision Pro, adopts dual 1.3" 4K OLED microdisplays made by Sony. According to reports, Apple is looking to replace Sony as its supplier and is testing displays made by Seeya and BOE. Apple seems to be aiming to adopt these in its next-gen Vision Pro model - and also in a future low-cost mixed-reality headset.

Sony officially launched its 1.3" 4K OLED displays last week, with an official price of $1,000 per unit. Some reports suggest that Apple is paying $350 per display - which is still very expensive, as the two OLED displays cost almost half of the total production cost of the Vision Pro (estimated at $1,500).

UBI Research forecasts that in 2025, shipments of smartphone OLED panels produced in China (regular and foldable) will surpass the shipments of panels made in Korea. UBI says that the growth of Chinese OLED makers will be driven by the large domestic market, government support, lower-cost production and improvement in production quality. 

UBI estimates that Korean OLED makers will retain their quality lead over Chinese companies, and will be able to generate higher revenues, even with lower shipments - but in 2028, the revenues of China-based OLED makers will also surpass Korea's OLED revenues. 

Researchers from South China University of Technology and Guangzhou New Vision Opto-Electronic have found that the lifetime and current efficiency of a tandem OLED device can be greatly improved by adding an ultra-thin Ytterbium (Yb) metal layer through the charge generation layer (CGL).

The experiments detail an ultra-thin Yb metal layer with low work function, high transmittance, and large atomic radii, added to a light-green tandem OLED devices. The new device exhibited a lifetime of 308 hours (T90) at an initial brightness of 10,000 cd/m² - which is 362 times (!) longer than that of a similar device without the Yb layer (T90 = 0.85 hours). The lifetime of the same material in a single-layer configuration (not a tandem device) was 49 hours (T90).

Back in 2021, Sony unveiled a 4K OLED microdisplay prototype. In June Apple announced the Vision Pro headset, which uses two Sony-made 1.3" 4K (3,552 × 3,840) OLED microdisplay, made by Sony. And today Sony finally officially introduced its ECX344A display, targeting VR and AR devices.

Sony says that in order to develop the new display it developed new miniaturization processes as well as a new pixel drive circuits and a high-speed driver circuit. Sony says that the display will ship by the end of 2023 and its price is set at 150,000 Yen, or just over $1,000 USD (it is estimated that Apple pays around $350 for each panel).

Germany-based beeOLED announced that it has raised $14.4 million in its Series A funding round, co-led eCAPITAL and Innovation Industries. Other investors include KBC Focus Fund and the company's existing investors M Ventures (the corporate venture capital arm of Merck), HTGF, TGFS, and JBN-Invest.

beeOLED was established in 2020 with an aim to develop deep-blue OLED emitters. The company's material technology is based on intra-metallic emission, that has been used in other display technologies in the past but have not been usable in OLED displays yet. beeOLED said that it is the first to make intra-metallic molecules compatible with the vacuum processing technology used in high-volume OLED display manufacturing.

beeOLED's CEO, Dr. Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth has 20+ years experience in managing deep tech teams and companies, and is the founder and CTO of Novaled. Dr. Jan was kind enough to answer a few question we had regarding beeOLED, its technology and business.

China-based Valiant announced plans to spin-off its OLED production subsidiary, Yantai Gem Chemicals. 

Yantai Gem Chemicals was established in 2005, and it produces intermediate materials for OLED panels (and other applications). If Valiant is successful in its plan, Yantai Gem will list in Shanghai's stock exchange. Following the spin-off, it will become an independent company, while Valiant will remain the major shareholder.

LG Display showed its WOLED roadmap during the K-Display conference in Seoul, saying that it will soon start producing 32-inch (16:9), 34-inch (21:9) and 39-inch (21:9) models.  These panels are aimed for computer monitor applications, rather than TVs, although the 32-inch could also be used as a TV panel.

LGD did not detail when it expects to start producing these panels. Dough already unveiled a few weeks ago that it is working on a 32" monitor, and this will be base on an LGD WOLED panel