In September 2013, Veeco acquired Synos Technology for $185 million for the company's FAST-ALD flexible OLED encapsulation technology. Veeco did received a purchase order from SDC for a first-generation FAST-ALD prototype system, but the significant orders Veeco hopes to achieve never materialized.

In early 2015 Veeco announced that they do not see near-term revenue coming from this sector. Yesterday Veeco decided to significantly reduce future investments in its ALD technology development. Veeco says that some "competitive technologies" solved the display makers problems and it now sees ALD business pushed back two or three years.

A few days ago we reported that Kateeva says it has taken a "commanding lead" in the OLED thin film encapsulation (TFE) market with its ink-jet based systems. Kateeva's ink-jet printers are used to deposit organic materials, but the full TFE stack also contains in-organic materials.

Currently both LG and Samsung producers are using PECVD to deposit the in-organic materials, but according to a report from ETNEws, both Korean display makers are thinking about switching to ALD. Several companies, including Jusung Engineering, WONIK IPS, AP Systems and TES has ALD-based encapsulation deposition systems ready to be used in display production. Both LG and Samsung have finished with R&D work on ALD technology and are ready to introduce commercial systems into their production lines.

ALD equipment maker Encapsulix developed a new ALD system (the Infinity 200) that is optimized for deposition on 200 mm substrates - for both R&D or manufacturing systems. The new system offers several advanced features especially suited for thin-film low-temperature encapsulation deposition on flexible substrates, particular for OLED displays.

Encapsulix announced that the new system was successfully installed and qualified for ultrafast OLED encapsulation at Leti, the CEA Tech research institute in Grenoble, France. Additional systems will be delivered in the next 12 months to customers in Asia.

Kateeva recently announced a large $88 million Series-E funding round, and the ink-jet equipment maker today announced that Ink-Jet guru Eli Vronsky has been promoted to the company's Chief Product Officer.

During our recent visit to San Francisco, we caught up with Kateeva’s executive team on a break from their presentations on inkjet printing for flexible OLEDs. Chief Product Officer Eli Vronsky gave us an update, as well as an overview of the company’s product strategy.

The UK Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) and Beneq signed a collaboration agreement to commercialise atomic layer deposition (ALD) technologies for printed electronics applications.

CPI OLED production line

Beneq and the CPI will create an open access environment for companies to develop ultra barrier solutions in areas such as photovoltaics, OLEDs, microelectronics and sensors. The CPI recently installed two ALD deposition tools from Beneq for the development of conformal nano-scale coatings - one batch ALD tool and one state of the art roll-to-roll ALD (R2R ALD) system. In particular the roll-to-roll ALD tool processing technology will be actively developed between the two companies.

3M announced that they entered into a licensing agreement with Lotus Applied Technology, which gives 3M access to Lotus' TransFlexALD spatial Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) and barrier materials patent portfolio.

The TransFlexALD is a roll-to-roll ALD deposition that can be used to make single-layer encapsulation layers suitable for OLED panels (and other devices).

IDTechEx Research says that the flexible encapsulation (barrier) market for flexible devices (such as displays, but not only) will reach over $184 by 2020. IDTechEx sees next-gen single-layer encapsulation solutions to capture a part of the market in the future.

IDTechEx also takes a look at two specific technologies. Flexible glass is not seen to become the solution of choice in the short to medium terms due to the fragility and the fact that it cannot be stressed out of axis - and extreme flexibility can be a problem. Flexible glass is seen to be the best choice for a substrate material, though.

Beneq announced a new broad range of upgrades and options for its TFS 200 R&D thin film system. These new options allow users to better match current research needs and stay at the forefront of ALD research.

Beneq’s upgrades and options expand the capabilities of existing ALD tools by adding some of the most advanced features of the ALD process itself. The company’s flexible and modular solutions are based on the world’s best ALD know-how.

In September 2013, Veeco acquired Synos Technology for $185 million for the company's FAST-ALD flexible OLED encapsulation technology. Veeco later received a purchase order from SDC for a first-generation FAST-ALD prototype system. Veeco expected a manufacturing ramp to begin in 2014 - hoping to book more than $75 in ALD production systems by the end of the year, but this never happened.

Veeco now reported their financial results for Q4 2014, and while the company says they "successfully demonstrated its FAST-ALD technology for flexible OLED encapsulation", they currently do not see any near-term revenue coming from this sector.

Kateeva unveiled a new mass production flexible OLED thin film encapsulation (TFE) system based on their ink-jet technology. The YIELDjet FLEX can enable cost-effective encapsulation deposition, and Kateeva says that the first mass-production system will ship to a customer in Asia later this month. This customer is probably Samsung Display (which recently invested in Kateeva), but this is not confirmed.

Kateeva says that inkjet printing enables superb particle performance, high efficiency and excellent scalability. The YIELDjet system is enclosed in a pure-nitrogen chamber, which is the best OLED processing environment, shielding the OLED materials from moisture and air. The ink-jet system provides exceptional planarization of substrate surface structures and particles and results in unprecedented film uniformity.