OLED displays are made from organic emitter materials - and are gaining in popularity as these next-generation displays offer excellent image quality and novel form factors.
Quantum Dots are tiny particles that have excellent photonic emission properties - and are used widely today in many LCD displays as the QD photoluminescence features enable the conversion of blue LED light to red and green light to create full-color displays that are better than white-backlit LCDs. QD particles can also be used to create emissive displays, in which the QDs themselves emit the light - read more about QD displays here.
QD-OLED displays are hybrid displays that use a combination of OLED emitters with QD color conversion layers and/or QD emitters. The basic idea is that the display uses only blue OLED emitters, and the QD layers conversts some of the pixels to red and green, thus creating a full color display.
Samsung QD-OLED
Samsung is the only company that have commercialized QD-OLED displays (at least until now). Samsung's QD Displays use blue OLED emitters and quantum-dots that convert the blue light to red and green light. In 2019 Samsung Display announced its decision to invest $10.85 billion in QD-OLED TV R&D and production lines. A few years later, SDC started to produce panels in its first fab, mass producing TV and monitor QD-OLEDs.
Samsung attracted several customers (Sony and Samsung Electronics for TV panels, and several companies for its monitors), and these displays have been very well received by the market. Samsung is currently producing around a million QD-OLED panels per year. The future roadmap of Samsung's QD-OLED displays is not clear.
TCL H-QLED
In 2019 it was unveiled that China-based display maker TCL is developing a new hybrid display technology that uses a blue OLED emitter coupled with red and green QD emitters. All three emitter materials will be combined and printed using ink-jet printing technology.
TCL callקג this technology H-QLED and said that this could prove to be the technology of choice for TCL's future high-end emissive TV displays. For more information on TCL's H-QLED, click here. The company, however, did not update on its H-QLED technology since 2019.
SDC upgrades its QD-OLED line, starts producing 31.5" 4K panels
Samsung Display announced that it is beginning to produce a new 31.5" 4K QD-OLED. This is SDC's highest density QD-OLED display, at 140 PPI. The company recently upgraded its QD inkjet printing deposition system to support this higher resolution. It will also enable SDC to produce 8K 65" QD-OLED displays (that will also be 140 PPI).
Samsung Display also announced that next year it will start producing 27" QHD QD-OLED monitor panels that will support a 360Hz refresh rate, targeting the gaming monitor market.
Rtings.com posts the results of its 10-month OLED and LCD display longevity tests
RTINGS.com posted an interesting article, detailing the results of their long-term (10-months) longevity tests on several OLED and LCD TVs and monitors. The test is simple - display a CNN feed constantly, and checking what happens. Note that CNN changed their logo a bit a few months into the test, but the team did not make any changes to the test itself.
As is expected, OLED monitors and TVs suffer from image retention problems, and the CNN logo is visible in some of these panels, when showing a gray screen. Some TVs suffer more than others.
UBI: Samsung to order only a limited number of WOLED TV panels from LGD in 2024
In July 2023, Samsung officially launched the 83" 83S90C, the company's first TV to use LG's WOLED panels, following several years of negotiations and hesitation by the Korean rivals.
It was assumed that Samsung's total orders from LGD will be limited (as the 83-inch are expensive and not highly popular), and according to UBI, the total number of panels that LGD actually shipped to Samsung is only 'several thousands'.
Reports suggest Kateeva's printers failed Samsung's QD printing tests, will not be used for QD-OLED production
According to reports, Kateeva's QD-OLED printing project saga is not over. Samsung Display tested the company's latest printers, but these failed the tests and Samsung Display will not but these printers. SDC planned to replace the currently-used Semes' printers, which also suffer from low performance.
Samsung Display is also not committed yet to expand its QD-OLED production lines, which means that in any case it does not need to buy new printers for production expansion. Earlier reports suggested that SDC wanted to upgrade it current capability for higher density (to reach 8K TV printing), so this may be the reason behind the testing of Kateeva's new printers.
Apple's IT OLED roadmap supposedly leaks, detailing when the company plans to launch its OLED laptops, monitors and tablets
Accoridng to Twitter (X) user Revegnus, the following is a leaked Apple roadmap, detailing the company's plans for OLED laptops, tablets and monitors:
As many already estimate, Apple will release the first OLED tablets next year, the iPad Pro 11" and 13". The next stage will only arrive in 2026, when Apple will ship a foldable 20.3" tablet, and two OLED laptops (MacBook Pro 14.2" and 16.2").
QD-OLED TVs win the 2023 4K Value Electronics TV display shootout
Value Electronics hosted their annual TV shootout, checking several high-end TVs to see which model provides the best images. The TVs were professionally calibrated, and tested one next to the other. In total, Value Electronics' shootout featured 6 65" 4K TVs - 3 OLEDs and 3 MiniLED LCD. IN the 8K shootout, there were 3 TVs, from Samsung, Sony and LG. As in previous years, OLED TVs were crowned the "King of TVs", in both the 4K and 8K categories.
For the 4K TV shootout, the best TV in the shootout was Sony's A95L QD-OLED TV. The runner-ups were Samsung's S95C (another QD-OLED TV) and LG's G3 OLED (with an LGD WOLED Panel). The 8K shootout's winner was LG's Z2 WOLED TV.
Samsung Display shows its latest flexible OLEDs at Display Week 2023 and unveils the OLED Sensor Display
Samsung Display demonstrated many OLED technologies at Display Week 2023, which we'll detail below. It seems that the main new technology was the Sensor OLED Display, which is an OLED with an embedded sensor that can perform fingerprint sensing in addition to blood pressure, heart rate sensing and stress level sensing (all from reading the finger), which the company says is the first such display in the world.
The Sensor OLED Display embeds light-sensing organic photodiodes (OPDs) inside the display itself, which allows it to perform the sensing functions all over the display. Samsung explains that as OLED light is reflected differently depending on the contraction and relaxation of the blood vessels inside the finger, the OPD senses the light when it returns to the panel, and converts it into health information.
Reuters - Samsung and LG finally sign a WOLED TV supply agreement, Samsung to buy 2 million OLED TV panels in 2024
LG Display has been negotiating a WOLED TV panel supply agreement with Samsung Electronics for a long time, and last year the company were close to an agreement, but discussions were halted in July 2022, and Samsung continued to launch its QD-OLED TV range. Last month it was reported that the two Korean companies are in talks again, and now Reuters says that LG and Samsung finally officially signed the supply agreement.
According to Reuters, LGD will start supplying panels to Samsung as early as this quarter (i.e. by the end of June 2023). Samsung agreed to order 2 million WOLED TV panels from LG in 2024, and this will grow to 3 million in 2025 and 5 million in 2026. The first panels will be 77-inch and 83-inch in size, but LG is likely to also supply smaller panels to Samsung.
Omdia: Apple to switch to OLED displays in almost all of its tablets, laptops and monitors by 2027
Omdia released its latest IT OLED display forecasts, with some interesting projections.
The company sees very nice growth ahead for OLED displays in the IT market, with shipments rising from around 9.7 million units in 2022 to over 70 million units in 2028. Most of the growth will come from adoption in laptops, but tablet adoption will also increase sharply.
Rtings.com burn-in tests show Samsung's QD-OLEDs suffer from worse burn-in compared to LG's WOLEDs
Review web site Rtings.com has performed an extensive accelerated longevity test for over three months, testing the latest QD-OLED and WOLED TVs.y
Rtings reports that both QD-OLED displays (Samsung S95B OLED and the Sony A95K) showed signs of image retention, and it seems in general that the QD-OLED displays suffer from worse problems compared to LG's WOLED. Some of Sony's WOLED TVs also showed signs of image retention.
