OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) is a flat light emitting technology, made by placing a series of organic thin films (usually carbon based) between two conductors. When an electrical current is applied, light is emitted. OLEDs are used to make displays and lighting panels. OLEDs today are widely used in TVs, smartphones, tablets, laptops and wearables.

While OLED displays excel in color-contrast and efficiency compared to LCDs, they’ve also proven relatively hard to produce on a large scale. Current evaporation-based production techniques involve a lot of wasted material and risk of defects. OLEDs are also extremely sensitive to moisture and oxygen and therefore must be protected with a high performance encapsulating layer.

OLED ink-jet printing

Current OLED producing methods rely on evaporation processes, in which the organic materials are deposited onto a glass sheet through a thin metal stencil, also known as a "shadow mask. This process is problematic, as a significant amount of the material is wasted because it disperses all over the mask, in addition to inherent mask changes which expose the sheet to dust and compromise yields (OLEDs are by nature sensitive to contamination).

Inkjet OLED printing has the desirable ability to allow precision deposits without the use of a mask. It also produces less stray particles, thus boosting yields. These significant advantages make this technology interesting to many companies and virtually all OLED makers have active ink-jet printing development projects.

For many years, companies all over the world invested heavily in inkjet printing processes for OLED displays, but the process is not yet common, as printing OLED displays is a relatively challenging task, and soluble OLED materials are less effective than evaporable ones. Ink-Jet printing is also not able to reach the same high densities of evaporation OLED production, which limits its applications for large-area production (TV panels) and not small mobile, VR and wearable OLEDs.

Printed OLED panels on the market

One area in which inkjet printing is common in the OLED production process is the encapsulation layer deposition. Almost all OLEDs that adopt TFE encapsulation use inkjet printing to deposit the organic elements.

LG UltraFine OLED Pro photo

LG 32EP950 OLED monitor (31" 4K printed OLED panel by JOLED)

For actual OLED emitter layers deposition, currently the only company that commercially uses ink-jet printing is Japan's JOLED, who in 2021 started printing OLED display panels in its 5.5-Gen production line in Nomi, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.

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The latest OLED ink jet news:

UDC announces new narrow-spectrum PHOLED materials, reports advances in OVJP deposition technology

Universal Display announced that it will detail advances in its latest PHOLED materials at Display Week 2023. The company's latest red, green, and blue PHOLED materials offer a narrow emission spectrum, which increases the efficiency of OLED devices, in addition to enhancing the color gamut.

UDC PHOLED materials photo (2017)
UDC also unveil a new OVJP system printed on a 200mm x 500mm Corning Astra Glass substrate. UDC will also showcase the first-ever fully printed seven-layer (HIL/HTL/EBL/EML/HBL/ETL/EIL), 80 PPI, green commercial-level PHOLED device fabricated by its R&D OVJP system that has comparable device performance with vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE). 

Read the full story Posted: May 22,2023

JOLED files for bankruptcy, Japan Display to take over assets

A report from Japan updates that JOLED , the OLED inkjet printing pioneer established in 2014, has filed for bankruptcy. The company has been struggling financially for a long time, and will now close down its two production lines and lay off 280 employees (out of 380), as it could not raise funds and has liabilities of around $257 million.

According to the report, display maker Japan Display will take over JOLED technology and remaining operations. 

Read the full story Posted: Mar 29,2023

Notion Systems starts building a new headquarters as demand for its printing systems is on the rise

Inkjet printing developer Notion Systems is building a new company headquarters in Schwetzingen, Germany, with a new production plant. The company recently held a groundbreaking ceremony of the new building which will have 3,600 m² of floor space.

Notion Systems is growing at a rate of 20% per year, and these new premises are needed to cope with its increasing number of orders. The company estimates that 18% of its revenue in coming years will be generated from the display industry, for which the company offers machines for inkjet printing of OLEDs, QDs, and more.

Read the full story Posted: Mar 22,2023

ICCAS chooses Notion Systems' inkjet printing solution to research organic materials for display appllications

Industrial inkjet printing developer Notion Systems announced that is has been selected by the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICASS) for organic material R&D. Notion Systems worked together with its partner YixinTech as its system went through a long comparison against other inkjet printers in the market.

ICCAS is a multi-disciplinary research institute dedicated to basic research in broad fields of chemical sciences. One of its major research areas is organic materials for display applications.

Read the full story Posted: Jan 30,2023

Kateeva starts to ship 8K QD deposition systems to Samsung Display

According to reports, Kateeva started to ship quantum dots inkjet printing equipment to Samsung Display, for the production of QD-OLED panels. It appears as if Samsung is interested in producing 8K QD-OLEDs, and its current inkjet printing supplier, Semes, is not ready with printers that support 8K QD deposition.

Kateeva YIELDJet TFE system photo

Kateeva announced that it has designed a new system, called the YIELDjet Jarvis, that supports 8.5-Gen substrates and can indeed enable 8K TV deposition. Kateeva says that the Jarvis system has the ability to print using solvent-based RGB inks or nanoparticle inks with its proprietary ink recirculation system to ensure uniform particle distribution.

Read the full story Posted: Dec 03,2022

DSCC: large-area OLED equipment sales to drop to zero in 2023, but resume in 2024 mostly for CSoT's inkjet printing panels

DSCC says that spending on equipment for the production of large area OLED panels (used in TVs and monitors) have decreased from $3 billion in 2019 to $2.05 billion in 2020, $1.47 billion in 2021 and will drop further to $1.42 billion in 2022.

LG B2 OLED TV photo

DSCC estimates that in 2023, the spending on such equipment will be zero. But OLED producers will resume buying large OLED equipment in 2024. Spending in 2024 will amount $2.01 billion, and in 2025 - $1.51 billion.

Read the full story Posted: Sep 26,2022

Is printed-OLED producer JOLED on the brink of bankruptcy?

JOLED (Japan OLED) was established in August 2014 by Japan Display, Sony and Panasonic with an aim to become an OLED medium display producer. Following years of R&D and initial production, the company initiated mass production of its OLEDIO panels in 2021 at its new 5.5-Gen production line in Nomi, Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan.

JOLED's panels appeared on the market, but only for high-end applications such as LG's professional monitor range. According to a new report from Korea, the company did not manage to find a new investor and is now on the verge of bankruptcy.

Read the full story Posted: Aug 06,2022

TCL shows a 17" foldable inkjet-printed IGZO AMOLED prototype

TCL's CSoT demonstrated a new prototype AMOLED display - a 17" IGZO foldable panel, that was produced using inkjet printing. The company says this kind of panel can be used in tablets, monitors and laptops.

TCL 17'' IGZO flexible inkjet-printed OLED prototype (ICDT 2022)

CSoT is progressing with its inkjet printing technology, and aims to start production in 2023. Last year the company demonstrated a 65" 8K inkjet-printed OLED TV panel, in addition to a 14" rollable panel.

Read the full story Posted: Jul 18,2022

AP Systems developed an inkjet printing system for OLED OCR deposition

Korea-based OLED equipment maker AP Systems (APS) announced that it developed a new system to deposit optically transparent resin (OCR) using an inkjet printing process.

Current OLED production uses an adhesive tape (OCA) to connect the cover glass to the display. But OCA is time-consuming and relatively expensive. OCR, on the other hand, is deposited directly on the panel and is more cost effective. We recently reported that Samsung Display aims to adopt OCR technology in its foldable OLEDs to reduce costs, and is testing inkjet systems made by STI.

Read the full story Posted: Jul 11,2022

Kateeva did not yet receive any QD-OLED inkjet printers orders from SDC, and may lose its patent portfolio to its latest investor

In 2020 Kateeva lost Samsung's QD-OLED inkjet printing inkjet printing contact to Korea's Semes, which resulted in massive layoffs including some of Kateeva's executives.

Kateeva YIELDJet TFE system photo

In January 2022 it was reported that Samsung has decided to change course, and rely on Kateeva's inkjet printers in its 2nd QD-OLED production line, as the Semes printers do not perform as well as Samsung hoped.

Read the full story Posted: Jul 07,2022