Japan's Dai Nippon Printing, the world's leader in evaporation mask (FMM) production, announced it will invest $54.6 million to triple its evaporation mask production capacity so it could meet the demand of the expanding OLED market.

According to the Nikkei Asian Review, DNP's market share in the evaporation mask market is over 50%. The company's expansion will be made in several stages, but should complete by 2020. DNP aims to reach $272 million in annual sales in 2020 (triple its current sales).

Visionox developed a new high-density (604 PPI) AMOLED panel. The new 2560x1440 prototype is 4.85" in size and was deposited using FMM / VTE. It uses Visionox's Z-Type AMOLED RGB sub-pixel arrangement first demonstrated in 2014.

Visionox recently started to mass produce the company's first AMOLED panel, a 5.5" display aimed towards the mid/high smartphone market. Visionox's Gen-5.5 AMOLED line can currently produce 4,000 monthly substrate, and once yields stabilize they will reach a full capacity of 15,000 monthly substrates.

IHS says that AMOLED material consumption will increase dramatically starting in the second half of 2015 as LG Display increase WRGB (WOLED) OLED TV panel production. The market will more than threefold - reaching $165 million in H2 2015, up from $58 million in H1.

IHS forecasts that the WOLED material market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 79% from 2014 to 2019, to reach over $1.25 billion. The whole AMOLED materials market will grow at 54%, from $658 million in 2015 to $2 billion in 2019 (at a CAGR of 37%).

The OLED Association reports that Shanghai Tianma demonstrated a new 5.5" Full-HD (400 PPI) AMOLED prototype. This is the highest-resolution display ever shown by the Chinese display maker, and reportedly they have adopted a subpixel scheme not unlike Samsung's Pentile technology. To achieve the high resolution, Tianma developed a dual-FMM technology in-house.

Tianma has been developing LTPS AMOLED technology for quite a while, and according to our information they are getting ready to release the first panels in 2016. Tianma has plans for three separate OLED production lines.

Researchers from the Korean Inha University developed a new method to produce shadow masks that could lead to masks that have higher densities and are also more robust - leading to higher yields in OLED production. The team are going to transfer the technology to a company that will commercialize it.

Samsung AMOLED production

The researchers used an electrochemical processing technique to manufacture the new masks. This enables masks that are stronger (and thus fail less often) and still reach pixel densities of up to 500 PPI.

The Nikkei Asian Review reports that Athene, a Japanese semiconductor technology maker, developed a new shadow mask (or Fine Metal Mask, FMM) specifically for high precision OLED production. The new mask is stronger and more durable than any other mask on the market, which means it can be used to make higher resolution OLEDs.

Samsung AMOLED production

This new strong mask was achieved by adding nickel and iron materials to the standard metal mask. Athene's mask can withstand temperatures of up to 100 degrees Celsius without deformation, and the company says it can enable the production of OLED panels with pixel densities of over 500 PPI. Athene plans to setup a production line to make these new shadow masks and they will start delivering products to OLED makers in 2015.

A few days ago LG Electronics launched the beautiful G Watch R smartwatch, with its 1.3" (320x320) flexible plastic-based OLED panel. Today LG Display announced that it started mass producing those OLED panels.

While it was pretty clear that LGD is behind this flexible OLED, it's good to hear a formal confirmation. LG Display further tells us that the panel is less than 0.6 mm thick and features a 100% color gamut (not sure which standard is that), 300 nit peak luminance and of course an "unlimited" contrast ratio.

The SID Display Week, the world's leading display industry showcase is scheduled for June, but the organizers already published the list of papers to be presented in this show. Hiding in this long list of technical achievements and research projects are some interesting new OLED developments. So here's some of the achievements to be announced during the show (at no particular order).

TCL's China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) managed to fabricate a 7" QVGA (320x240) flexible PMOLED display. The display uses a thin PEN substrate, processed at Gen-4.5. The company also proposes a design for a 14" QVGA PMOLED panel. CSOT also developed a 31" Full-HD AMOLED panel that uses a IGZO backplane. The 31" direct-emission panel was produced on a Gen-4.5 glass substrate using FMM.

China's BOE Display has been discussing its 5.5-Gen LTPS fab in Ordos for a long time. Today BOE announced that it finally approves the AMOLED line in that fab, and will begin construction soon in a 22 billion yuan investment ($3.6 billion). The fab's capacity will be 54,000 glass substrates a month and will produce small and medium sized panels.

BOE Ordos 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab

According to earlier reports, the fab will begin producing LTPS LCDs soon (by the end of 2013). It's not clear whether the AMOLED line is a new line or whether BOE will convert one of the LCD lines to AMOLED. It is expected that BOE will only start mass producing AMOLEDs by the end of 2014. BOE's AMOLED fab will use high-resolution FMM deposition and a WRGB architecture. We know that BOE is also developing ink-jet printing technology but this will most likely take more time to commercialize.

China's BOE Display is building a 5.5-Gen LTPS fab in Ordos by the end of 2013. This fab will first produce LTPS LCDs, but BOE wants to switch it to AMOLED production. According to OLEDNet, during the FPD International 2013, BOE's Dawei Wang (their flexible technology R&D director) said that in addition to the 5.5-Gen line in Ordos, they are also working towards a Gen-8 Oxide-TFT line in Hefei.

BOE Ordos 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab

This new line will use high-resolution FMM deposition and a WRGB architecture. We know that BOE is also developing ink-jet printing technology, it's not clear from OLEDNet's article whether printing technologies are also planned for the Hefei line.