Glass

The OLED's industry main new target, for the past several years, has been the IT display sector, mainly tablets, laptops and monitors. While we have seen OLED displays penetrate this market many years ago, the current 6-Gen AMOLED production lines are optimized for smartphone and wearable display production.

A few years ago display makers realized that OLED production lines with larger substrates will enable lower cost production, and will enable to increase the adoption of OLEDs in such devices. When this converged with technology readiness (depositing OLED materials and TFTs on such large areas was not possible before), several companies initiated new projects, all of which use 8.6-Gen (2250 x 2600 mm) substrates. We are now at a stage where two companies (BOE and Samsung) are very close to mass production, and the first displays will start production soon. 

Reports suggest that Samsung Electronics may acquire some of its OLED panels for the upcoming Galaxy A57 smartphone from TCL CSOT. Up until now, SDC has been the exclusive supplier of Samsung's A5 smartphone family (which is a sort of high-mid-range series). The same OLED panel will also be used on the upcoming Galaxy S FE models next year.

Samsung Display is still likely to bet he main supplier for these displays, but Samsung Electronics considers adding TCL CSOT as a supplier to reduce costs. Up until now the A5 series used rigid (glass-based) OLEDs, but next year Samsung may opt for a flexible AMOLED to enable smaller screen bezel and a lighter phone. Flexible AMOLEDs are more expensive to make, and adding TCL CSOT as a second supplier may offset some of these costs.

BOE officially announced that it has lit up its 8.6-Gen AMOLED production line in Chengdu, five months ahead of schedule. The company aims to be the first in the world to mass produce OLED IT panels in a 8.6-Gen line. 

Back in October, we reported that BOE is accelerating the building of its 8.6-Gen line. The company's original plan was to start mass production in Q4 2026, but now it hopes to begin production in Q3 2026, a month or two earlier than Samsung Display (that also hopes to begin mass production in Q3 2026).

According to industry reports, LG Display is struggling with problems in its supply chain, and the company is not able to produce enough iPhone 17 LTPO AMOLED panels to satisfy Apple's needs. It is suggested that Apple may have to shirt some of its orders to Samsung Display. It seems as if LG Display cannot get a stable supply of glass fiber, a raw material that LG Display uses as part of the AMOLED glass carrier glass process.

LG Display is producing AMOLED displays for Apple's latest iPhone 17, 17 Pro Max, and 17 Air models. Samsung Display, meanwhile, produces AMOLED displays to all of the iPhone 17 models, including the iPhone 17 Pro. It is estimated that SDC will bring its AMOLED fab utilization to close to 100% until the end of 2025 to satisfy Apple's demand.

AP Systems announced that it has been selected to supply Visionox with 8.6-Gen ELA and LLO systems, for its upcoming V5 8.6-Gen fab. AP Systems also revealed that it has been Visionox's exclusive supplier of LLO and ELA systems for its previous OLED production lines.

ELA, or Excimer Laser Annealing, is used to turn amorphous silicon to polycrystalline silicon - an important step of depositing LTPS backplanes for OLED displays. LLO, or Laser based Lift-Off is used to separate two substrates, usually a flexible Polyimide OLED substrate from its glass carrier. 

China-based LCD maker HKC aims to become an AMOLED producer, and we now have more details on its strategic plans. In 2023, HKC started a collaboration with JDI to build an eLEAP AMOLED production line in China. These plans were canceled towards the end of 2023, but the company continued to develop its AMOLED technologies, and in early 2025 it acquired Royole's AMOLED production line equipment.

Earlier this month HKC produced its first AMOLED display sample - a smartphone type panel, produced on an advanced Oxide-TFT (IGZO) backplane. 

Samsung Display announced that its latest foldable OLED panels have been tested to last for over 500,000 folding cycles, this enough for over 10 years for average use, and over 6 years for 'heavy' users that fold their devices more than 200 times a day. This is the panel that is used in the Galaxy Z Fold7 smartphone.

 SDC says that its new foldable OLED panels were tested and verified by the global testing, inspection, and certification company Bureau Veritas. SDC raised its internal durability testing standard from 200,000 to 500,000 folds. 

Samsung Display is introducing a new IT AMOLED display type, branded as UT One OLED. UT One displays feature an ultra-thin structure and a variable refresh rate (VRR) of down to 1Hz. Samsung says that UT One OLEDs offer a reduced power consumption by 30% compared to 'conventional panels'.

UT One OLEDs are produced on a glass substrate, but offer a TFE encapsulation, to reduce thickness (by 30%) and weight (also 30%). Samsung says that compared to a standard rigid OLED protected by two glass panels, this can reduce weight by about 50 gram in a laptop display.

According to a report from Korea, Samsung Display has decided to adopt a tandem OLED stack architecture in its future automotive OLED panels. Up until now, most of its automotive displays used a single stack. This change will enable the company to offer highly efficient and longer lasting panels. 

In addition to the tandem stack architecture, Samsung Display has also finished the development of automotive flexible OLED panels, produced on a polyimide substrate, and encapsulated via TFE. The company is also developing rigid TFE OLEDs produced on glass. The company has developed these new panels as per customer requests.

Researchers from the Korea's SNU, KAIST and KIMM developed a new lift-off process for flexible OLED displays, based on graphene. The researchers term the new method GLLO, or Graphene Laser Lift Off.

The researchers placed a single-layer CVD graphene film between the polyimide film and the glass carrier. The graphene, with its ability to absorb ultra-violet light and distribute heat laterally, enables a clean lift-off without any wrinkles or residues. Using the GLLO method, the researchers successfully separated 2.9 μm thick ultrathin PI substrates without any mechanical damage or carbon residue left behind. In contrast, traditional methods left the substrates wrinkled and the glass carriers unusable due to stubborn residues. This breakthrough has far-reaching implications for stretchable electronics and wearable devices.