Following strong demand for IT devices, and Samsung's success in the OLED laptop market, OLED makers have began to plan building new OLED production lines specifically for IT applications: laptops, tablets and monitors.

Several OLED makers, including Samsung, LG and BOE, are considering building 8.5-Gen production lines for this market. In fact DSCC estimated that there are 11 such lines under development right now. But it turns out that this is not so simple as designing the evaporation equipment for larger substrates is a challenge.

In 2020 Kateeva lost Samsung's QD-OLED inkjet printing inkjet printing contact to Korea's Semes, which resulted in massive layoffs including some of Kateeva's executives.

In January 2022 it was reported that Samsung has decided to change course, and rely on Kateeva's inkjet printers in its 2nd QD-OLED production line, as the Semes printers do not perform as well as Samsung hoped.

According to reports from Korea, supply chain issues are slowing down LG Display's OLED production expansion plans, and key components cannot be secured.

According to the report, the delivery times of some components have more than doubled, and Korean equipment makers cannot produce and supply the production systems that LGD requires. Only 9% of components used in equipment makers in Korea are produced in Korea.

Merck announced that it has completed its OLED manufacturing capacity expansion project at its Poseung site in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Merck invested around 20 million Euros to install sublimation equipment and an OLED vacuum deposition unit.

From the left, Jung Do Young, Director General for Economic Planning of Gyeonggi-do, WooKyu Kim, Managing Director of Merck Korea, Choi Won Yong, Deputy Mayor of Pyeongtaek City

Merck began to lay the foundation for R&D, production and the stable supply of OLED materials to Korean panel makers in 2005, as part of its successful strategy of achieving success through domestic research and production. The company continuously interacts with OLED researchers from Korean panel companies so that Korea can continue to lead the OLED industry, and Merck develops materials for OLED TV and flexible, rollable and foldable OLED displays together with its customers.

Notion Systems GmbH, a leading manufacturer of inkjet printing systems for functional materials, has received several orders for its newly developed n.jet EHD platform. The EHD (Electrohydrodynamic) technology is a promising technology to reduce structure sizes to less than one micron and enables the use of higher viscosity inks. It supports printing of small structures in microelectronics, semiconductor and next generation display manufacturing. Notion will ship the first four n.jet EHD systems to undisclosed customers in Europe in the third quarter of 2022.

The overall benefits of inkjet printing in the display industry are:

• Printing of smaller features sizes compared with conventional inkjet printing
• Elimination and replacement of various process steps
• Material savings, as printing is done digitally and without masks
• Replacement of expensive process steps

Several presentations and discussions with industry representatives during Display Week 2022 in San Jose USA revealed that inkjet printing technology for OLED/QLED displays will play an important role in future production. Since standard inkjet printing has a limitation at 400 dpi, EHD technology is the way to go. This was one of the main reasons why Notion entered into a cooperation with EHD printhead manufacturer Scrona in Switzerland last year, says Antonio Schmidt - SVP Sales & Marketing of Notions Systems

According to SNU Precision's web site, the company is set to release a new tool that will enable the deposition of direct-emission OLED materials on silicon wafers for microdisplay panels.

SNU Precision says that the new tool will support both R&D settings and mass production, with support for 200 mm and 300 wafers. The tool will launch "soon" but SNU does not give more details.

Reports from Korea suggest that Samsung Display is starting to install production equipment in its new 6-Gen AMOLED fab in Asan. The A4-2 line (previously called the A4-E line) is a converted old LCD fab(L7-2) that was closed in early 2021.It is estimated that the A4-2 line will cost around $800 million USD. Samsung hopes to start production in the new production line by Q3 2022, and monthly capacity will be 12,500 substrates.

According to reports from Korea, Unijet has supplied China-based Sidtek with inkjet printing systems, used for thin-film encapsulation (TFE) deposition of OLED microdisplays. This is Unijet's first sell of a commercial TFE printing system.

Sidtek, established in 2016, is now producing 0.39" XGA OLED microdisplays, which are available on the OLED marketplace. Sidtek's 0.39" display is available in a color version (1,000 nits) or a monochrome one.

OLED makers are using gold crystals to monitor and control the deposition of organic materials. Many OLED producers choose INFICON's crystals for this demanding task.

INFICON recently launched a new high-precision sensor crystal line that features improved activity stability, which leads to less activity dips and improved deposition rate stability.

DSCC says that it expects OLED investments (new production capacity) to increase in the IT space, as demand for laptops, tablets and monitors increases and OLED penetration increases. There is much room for growth in this market - DSCC estimates that the current OLED penetration into the IT display market is just 1.4% in 2021. DSCC expects to see fabs focused on the IT markets accounting for 37% of 2022-2025 OLED equipment spending.

Helped by spending in IT markets, 2024 is expected to be the largest year for OLED equipment spending since 2017. Interestingly, DSCC says that OLED spending in China is has slowed due to a lack of penetration, but OLED spending in Korea continues to increase. Korea’s OLED spending is expected to grow by 637% in 2022 and another 50% in 2023 to $4.4B.