Sharp announced that it has developed, in collaboration with NHK, a 30" rollable 4K OLED panel on an IGZO backplane. This is a direct emission OLED, which sharp says is the world's largest ever produced (LG's OLEDs all use color filters).

Sharp's OLED panel is deposited on a thin-film substrate, and has a thickness of 0.5 mm. The display uses NHK's signal processing and panel driving technologies to "improve the brightness uniformity and video clarity".

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q2 2019. Revenues were $5.4 million, down from $7.1 million a year ago and eMagin had an operating loss of $2.9 million (down from $3.6 million in Q2 2018). At the end of the quarter eMagin had $3.7 million in cash and equivalents.

eMagin says that the second quarter of 2019 was a challenging one for the company, as deliveries were impacted by continuing production issues and revenue and profitability fell short of expectations. The company is taking several actions to address the shortfall and are seeing early signs of progress. The company's backlog remains strong, at $11.6 million (an increase of approximately $1 million over the backlog of $10.6 million at December 31, 2018).

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q1 2019. Revenues were $6.1 million (down from $6.1 million in Q1 2018) and net loss was $1.4 million (down from $2.1 million in Q1 2018). At the end of the quarter, eMagin had $3.5 million in cash and equivalents (before its latest financing round).

Regarding its consumer business, eMagin updates that it successfully processed the first 4k x 4k wafers for its Tier-1 consumer electronics partner and has confirmed its ability to develop a large-area silicon OLED microdisplay with no visible non-uniformity. It plans to finalize the first full-color prototypes in Q3 2019.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q2 2018 - revenues increased 34% over Q2 2017 to reach $7.1 million, and net loss was $1 million (excluding one-time charges). At the end of the quarter, the company had $8.7 million in cash and equivalents. eMagin's backlog at the end of June was $10.3 million (an increase of $0.5 million from the end of 2017).

eMagin says it sold OLED microdisplays to 75 customers (including 3 new ones) during the quarter - for a wide range of applications including night vision, thermal weapon sights and see-through HMD systems for mounted and dismounted missions. The company improved its production yields (with some support from the US government for OLED production and yield improvement project) and its product quality.

Researchers from the Fraunhofer FEP institute developed a new micro-patterning process using an electron beam to produce OLED microdisplays on silicon substrates. This could enable a new way to produce direct-emission OLED microdisplays, which will be more efficient and bright compared to the current ones that use color filters.

The electron beam patterning is performed after the encapsulation step - the beam goes through the encapsulation layer and can be used to modify the emission of the OLED materials. To create red, green, and blue pixels, an organic layer of the OLED itself is ablated by a thermal electron beam process.

ETNews posted an interesting article, claiming that Samsung Display is developing a new TV technology that combines OLED emitters with quantum-dot photo-luminescence materials. The basic idea is to use blue OLED emitters and then convert the blue light to white light using quantum-dots combined with color filters (QDCFs) to add red and green colors.

Samsung OLED TVs (2013)

This seems to be a rather complicated design, but it could be much easier to produce compared to a true RGB OLED TV, as there is no need for precise OLED patterning. This is similar to LG's WRGB OLED TVs which use a white OLED source (made from yellow and blue emitters) and color filters on top.

LG Display currently produces all its OLED TV panels using an evaporation (VTE) process. Market research company DSCC says that ink-jet printing is more efficient than current VTE processes as it will result in simpler displays (no need for color filters, for example, as used by LG's current WRGB displays). Ink-Jet printing will also enjoy lower depreciation costs and lower indirect expenses such as water and electricity.

DSCC estimates that an ink-jet printed 55" OLED TV panel will cost 17% less to produce compared to a VTE produced panel. An ink-jet printed panel will theoretically be significantly brighter (as the color filters absorb a large portion of the light), however solution-based OLED materials have traditionally lagged behind evaporation ones (Merck though says that the latest soluble materials are on-par with evaporation ones).

IHS Markit says that global AMOLED production capacity is set to grow from 11.9 million square meters to 50.1 million sqm in 2022 - that's a 320% growth in 5 years. Samsung and LGD will remain the market leaders and Korea will have a market share of 71% in 2022 (down from 93% in 2017). China-based OLED makers will have a market share of 26% in 2022 (up from 5% in 2017).

IHS says that the majority of OLED capacity will still be used to produce RGB (direct-emission) OLEDs in 2022. RGB OLED production capacity will grow from 8.9 million sqm in 2017 to 31.9 million sqm in 2022. WOLED (WRGB) OLED TV panel capacity will grow from 3 million sqm in 2017 to 18.2 million sqm in 2022.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q2 2017. Revenues in the quarter were $5.3 million (down from $5.5 million in Q2 2016) and the net loss was $2.3 million (up slightly from $2.2 million in Q2 2016).

At the end of the quarter, eMagin had $4.9 million in cash and equivalents. eMagin is focused on expanding its presence in military programs, advancing discussions with major consumer electronics companies for VR/AR products and progressing with finding high-volume production partners.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin reported its financial results for Q1 2017. Revenues in the quarter were $6.1 million (down from $7 million in Q1 2016). Product revenues totaled $4.4 million (down from $5.3 million in Q1 2016 but up from $3.7 million in Q4 2016). Net loss was $2 million (compared to a net income of $11,000 in Q1 2016).

At the end of the quarter eMagin had $3.8 million in cash and equivalents. The company's main objectives in the near future is to advance its technology and complete the direct-patterning development, achieve consumer design wins for VR and AR headset makers and sign a large-scale production agreement to support the large volumes required for consumer displays.