LITI

According to Digitimes, Samsung's upcoming "next-gen" AMOLED panels will use a new pixel layout. Reportedly, Samsung are developing hexagon and diamond shaped pixels. This means that Samsung will increase the resolution but the picture will suffer due to jagged pixel artifacts and blurring. It's probably that at such high pixel density this won't actually be noticed, but still.

In the Galaxy Note II Samsung introduced a new sub-pixel scheme, an RGB matrix in which the blue subpixel is twice as large as the red and green ones - which achieved 267 PPI. Obviously the new 4.99" Full-HD displays have a much higher PPI (440). I assumed Samsung will use the same PenTile arrangement used in most of their AMOLED displays.

Samsung has officially launched their YOUM flexible OLED technology. While the YOUM brand was shown back in April 2012, it is now officially the name of Samsung's plastic-based flexible OLED panel products. The company didn't reveal any new technical details, nor did they say when they'll start shipping products based on those panels (or ship panels to other customers) - but it seems that they are getting closer and closer to mass production. Personally I think we'll still have to wait a year (at least) for them to overcome all technical issues with production.

While we don't have any interesting facts to tell here, we do have some cool videos - showing a bendable panel and also devices that use curved YOUM displays. One of those devices (shown below) has a 5" curved YOUM panel.

Samsung has been promising flexible OLED displays in 2012, but a new report suggests that the company had to delay mass production of flexible OLEDs due to technical issues. Specifically, it seems that Samsung is struggling with the low yields in their LITI process. According to the report, they are attempting a hybrid patterning process - FMM for blue sub-pixels and LITI for the red and green ones.

On a positive note, the report says that it's possible that Samsung will overcome the technical issues fast enough to introduce a first device (smartphone?) in the first half of 2013. Back in April Samsung announced that it will brand its flexible OLEDs as YOUM displays. As we said before, the plan was to release these OLEDs in 2012.

Update: according to the english version of the article, the 350ppi was achieved "in the lab", so it's not clear how close this is to commercialization. The article also suggests that Samsung is indeed moving away from LITI...

There's a report from Korea suggesting that Samsung managed to reach 350 ppi on an OLED display using FMM (Fine Metal Mask). Up until now Samsung focused on LITI to reach such high resolutions, but if this is true then Samsung can quickly apply this production process to their current AMOLED fabs.

Hopefully we'll hear more of this achievement if true soon. One of the major advantages of current LCDs over OLED panels is the higher possible density (Apple's Retina display for example reaches 326 ppi), so this may be a huge boost for OLEDs.

Samsung is getting ready to release flexible OLEDs soon, and have announced that these displays will be branded as YOUM displays. Today the OLED association released some interesting information regarding Samsung's flexible OLED manufacturing program. According to this report, products that use these displays will be introduced in Q4 2012, while mass production will begin as early as next month.

Back in May 2011 Samsung announced a joint venture with Japan's Ube Kosan to develop and produce polyimide resin - to be used as substrates for their flexible displays in a $18 million investment. Now we hear that the curing equipment for the hardened polyimide will be provided by Korea's Tera Semicon.

There's an interesting article discussing a team of engineers in Samsung which developed the Super AMOLED HD displays. As was suggested before, Samsung is still using a Shadow Mask (or FMM) to fabricate Super AMOLED HD displays. Using new materials and a new manufacturing process they managed to develop such a fine mask that enabled over 300ppi - a thing that was considered impossible by several companies.

So Samsung didn't move to LITI production yet, and they are still using FMM. Samsung also developed a new technique called Small Mask Scanning (or SMS) will enables them to scale up AMOLED production to 8-Gen plants.

Update: according to new reports, the OLED-A was wrong and Samsung are still using a Shadow-Mask to fabricate Super AMOLED HD displays

The OLED Association published a very interesting paper discussing Samsung's and LG Display's efforts to scale OLED production to large size panels (specifically 55" OLED TVs). In the article, they say that Samsung will use an LTPS substrate with a SMS (Small Mask Scanning) method, while LGD plans to use an Oxide TFT and Kodak's White OLED with color filters architecture. We already reported about Samsung's SMS method a few weeks ago.

The article includes a very interesting comparison of the different deposition methods (FMM, LITI, SMS, Printing and LG's RGBW). They also claim that the new display in the Samsung Galaxy II LTE HD was produced using LITI.

Korea Investment & Securities produced an interesting investment report about the Korean and Taiwanese AMOLED industry. They focus on material and equipment suppliers. Basically they say that large OLED panels will be produced soon (by 2013 or 2014 at the latest) by both Samsung and LG, and they try to identify which companies will benefit from this OLED market expansion. They say that both LG and Samsung will eventually convert their lines to Oxide-TFTs.

Strangely they do not even mention Universal Display and Novaled - which are both major material suppliers to Samsung and LG - even though they do list a lot of "foreign" material suppliers such as Dow Chemical, Idemitsu Kosan, Merck and even Kodak (which is no longer into OLEDs...). In their analysis for Duksan, for example, they do not mention the fact that the green material is now supplied by Universal - which should reduce the company's revenue from OLEDs... So we do not vouch for this report...

I just had an interesting talk with two industry insiders (one of them is a Samsung supplier) - about Samsung's upcoming Super AMOLED HD display. It turns out that these displays are indeed real - and will be unveiled soon. We can expect 5" to 6" smartphones in fall 2011 (the first will probably be the GT-I9220 with a 5.3" display) and 7" tablets by the end of 2011.

A 7-inch Super AMOLED prototype

According to my sources, Samsung managed to achieve HD resolution on these small displays by using PenTile matrix again (like in the original Super AMOLED displays). They have also developed a new manufacturing process and are using new materials. It might be that they have finally started to use Universal Display's green PHOLED (we reported that Samsung is using a green phosphorescent in their new 5.5-Gen plant, but perhaps they will only start using it in the HD displays).

We've got new details about the resolution of Samsung's Super AMOLED Plus. Super AMOLED Plus drops the PenTile matrix used in Samsung's previous generation AMOLEDs, and so have 50% sub pixels (see explanation here). This causes it to be clearer, but actually each pixel is a bit larger and so a 4.3" Super AMOLED Plus display features the same resolution as a 4" Super AMOLED.

But we were also told that Samsung will produce Super AMOLED Plus at higher resolutions - and achieve over 300ppi. Today we learned that Samsung plans to move from Fine-Metal-Mask (FMM) technology to laser-induced thermal imaging (LITI). This will enable them to achieve much higher resolutions. We do not know when they plan to actually start using LITI, but when they do they'll be able to produce displays with much higher resolutions (on par with Apple's Retina-Display).