Manufacturing equipment - Page 2

OLED microdisplay developer Seeya Information Technology has ordered OLED deposition (evaporation) equipment from Korea's Sunic System, in a deal worth $25.15 million.

Sunic Systems will provide Seeya with 12-inch (300 mm) OLED deposition tools. Sunic is developing direct-patterning deposition equipment, but it is not clear whether this order is for such tools or whether these will be the standard white OLED with color filter deposition.

Industrial laser developer Coherent announced a new Monaco industrial ultraviolet (UV) femtosecond laser with 50 W of output power. The company says that the new laser, the first 50 W 400 fs UV laser with proven 24/7 industrial-grade performance, is ideal for high-speed, high-volume cutting of stacked-OLED displays. 

This laser is used to cut the OLED displays after they are fully produced, which is why Coherent uses the term stacked-OLED (it does not refer to an OLED display with a stacked - or tandem - emitter design). The laser cutting enables shapes, notches and holes. Coherent updates that it installed over 800 Monaco laser systems worldwide (not all at OLED display fabs, though, the Monaco systems are also used in other applications).

Universal Display announced that it will detail advances in its latest PHOLED materials at Display Week 2023. The company's latest red, green, and blue PHOLED materials offer a narrow emission spectrum, which increases the efficiency of OLED devices, in addition to enhancing the color gamut.

UDC also unveil a new OVJP system printed on a 200mm x 500mm Corning Astra Glass substrate. UDC will also showcase the first-ever fully printed seven-layer (HIL/HTL/EBL/EML/HBL/ETL/EIL), 80 PPI, green commercial-level PHOLED device fabricated by its R&D OVJP system that has comparable device performance with vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE). 

The trade war between the US and China escalates, an the US is mostly focused on restricting semiconductor equipment, materials and chips sales to China as its sees semiconductors as a crucial strategic technology.

According to new reports, the US is now considering adding display technologies, mostly OLEDs, to the list of restricted technologies and may ask Japan and Korea to stop selling materials and equipment to Chinese display makers. 

The following is a sponsored article by Coherent

It’s well known that laser technology is critical for making OLED displays. In particular, the use of excimer laser annealing (ELA) to transform the amorphous silicon deposited on the display mother glass into polycrystalline silicon is essential for proper device performance.

But lasers are used at many other key steps in the production process. Several of these involve high precision cutting. The figure identifies two of these. The first is FlexOLED shape and hole cutting. The second is coverglass and window cutting.

Coherent has launched a new Monaco infrared industrial femtosecond laser configuration with 150 W of output power. The company says that the new laser is ideal for cutting of large OLED display glass.

The OLED industry is now entering the IT display market (tablets, laptops and monitors) and this accelerates the demand for laser tools with higher output power that can process larger glass sheets than those currently used in smartphones and wearables. Coherent says that the new Monaco 1035-150-150 outputs more than double the power and pulse energy of existing configurations, enabling high-precision cutting of large glass panels in very high volumes to produce large OLED screens with perfect assembly fit in next-generation IT devices. Coherent says that its new laser is the smallest femtosecond laser of its kind on the market and the easiest to integrate into laser tools.

In the past year or so, much have been said about Samsung's plans to build a 8-Gen OLED IT production line, as the company wants to expand its capacity for monitors, laptops and tablet OLED displays.

Samsung plan for a full-cut 8-Gen line

As this is the first such production line, SDC had two ongoing R&D projects: one with Ulvac, that used full-cut vertical OLED deposition, and another with Canon Tokki, that used half-cut horizontal deposition. According to the latest reports from Korea, SDC decided to prioritize the Canon Tokki half-cut project, as the technology is more mature and is more likely to finish as per Apple's roadmap.

In 2021 The Korean government launched a new project that aims to develop technologies for the production of OLED microdisplays for AR applications. The project is led by AP Systems (APS Holdings), and aims to produce a direct emission OLED microdisplay with a resolution of 4,000 PPI by 2024. Earlier this year APS developed FMM masks that reached 1,000 PPI.

APS now announced that it has produced a 3,000 PPI direct-emission OLED microdisplay, based on its FMM technology. This is very impressive progress.

Earlier in 2022, Samsung Display confirmed it is developing OLED microdisplays. Samsung admitted it is still at an early stage of development, and it said it will start building its first line (with likely limited capacity) in 2023. By 2024 it will mass produce displays, and in 2025 it will expand capacity so that by 2026 it will achieve full commercialization.

Today we hear new reports from Korea that shed some more light on Samsung's OLED microdisplay fab status. The company has started to order equipment (from SFA Engineering and AP Systems, it seems) for a 300 mm pilot line that will be located at Samsung's existing A2 fab in Asan, Korea.