The Elec: Samsung Display is interested in maskless OLED production processes, looking for an exclusive license

A report from Korea's The Elec publication says that Samsung Display is highly interested in next-generation OLED deposition technologies, that are not based on a metal mask (FMM). Several companies are developing and commercialization such technologies. As these may enable higher-performance OLED production, Samsung Display is interested.

A few months ago we reported that SDC is interested in SEL's maskless production technology, and indeed the new The Elec report states that the two companies are in talks. SEL is one of the three companies we are aware of that have advanced maskless technologies, the other two being Visionox and Japan Display. Samsung Display is mostly interested in a technology that it can exclusively license as it does not want other companies to produce OLEDs using the same technology. Both Visionox and JDI are interested in using their technologies in-house, which is a problem for SDC.

SEL developed a process that does not use FMM, and can be highly effective. One interesting note about SEL's new production process is that the encapsulation of the OLED materials is performed before the patterning process, which is based on wet etching. This is unlike other production processes in which the encapsulation is the last step of the process. We do not have a lot of information on SEL's maskless process.

SEL developed many other innovative OLED technologies, including an OLED device architecture called ExTET ('exciplex triplet energy transfer') that can increase the performance of OLED devices, CAAC-IGZO (C-Axis aligned crystalline In-Ga-Zn-O) backplane technology, flexible OLED embedded photodetectors, foldable OLED technology and more.