DSCC posted an interesting post with its latest views and forecasts on the OLED material market. The company expects AMOLED stack material sales to grow at a 18% CAGR in the next five years, from $294 million in 2019 to $2.46 billion in 2024. Compared to its previous estimate, DSCC sees higher sales as demand for OLED TVs and OLEDs in the IT market (tablets and notebooks) is increasing.

DSCC also posted an analysis of LGD's new evo OLED material stack. Compared to LGD's "standard" WOLED stack, the evo adds an emitting green layer to improve the brightness by 20%. This of course adds an extra material cost to the panel price.

Last month we reported that Merck is expanding its OLED laboratories in Shanghai. Today Merck released a formal PR and details its latest plans in Asia.

Merck says that it will invest 26 million Euro ($23.6 million USD) to expand its OLED manufacturing capacities at the Pyeongtaek (Korea) and Shanghai sites.

In 2018 Merck opened an OLED technology center in Shanghai, that includes laboratories to enable device fabrication and characterization for local Chinese-based OLED customers.

It is now reported that Merck is investing $26 million to expand the OLED laboratories and build an OLED material plant in the area. The new plant will start production by the end of 2022.

Samsung Display has developed a 18.2" 2560x1440 202 PPI inkjet-printed OLED display, that features the highest current efficiency of any inkjet-printed OLED, with the brightness at 350 cd/m² (full white).

Samsung Display says that the high brightness was achieved by tuning the top-emission device structure with high performance soluble materials. The high pixel resolution was achieved by modulating the jetting waveform for ejecting ink drops and improving the drop placement accuracy by selecting the right ink formulations in terms of viscosities and surface energies.

DSCC updated its OLED material market estimates, saying that AMOLED stack material sales will grow from $951 million in 2019 to $2.69 billion in 2024 - a CAGR of 23%. These new estimates take into account DSCC's reduced input area forecast due to the slowdown in demand cased by the Covid-19 pandemic.

DSCC says that incremental improvements in material utilization and price reductions, material costs per square meters will decline in the future. The unyielded cost of producing a square meter of a WOLED TV panel will decline from $95.21 in 2019 to $56.11 in 2024.

Merck announced that it has acquired over 700 OLED display applications patent families from Konica Minolta. The acquired IP will be used to "further enhance Merck’s position as key supplier of OLED materials".

Merck did not detail the financial terms of this deal.

Universal Display and Merck announced that the two companies will collaborate on OLED research and development. The two companies will join their know-how to accelerate the development of new products.

This joint development program brings together UDC's leading-edge phosphorescent OLED emitters with Merck's state-of-the-art transport materials. The objective is to develop higher performing OLED stacks for OLED manufacturers around the world.

DSCC analysts say that OLED stack materials will grow from $1.04 billion in 2018 to over $2 billion in 2022 - a CAGR of 17%.

DSCC says that up until now it greatly underestimated Novaled's revenues, and it now says that Novaled generated revenues of $97 million in 2017 and $122 million in 2018. Novaled is the third largest OLED material company by revenue - following Universal Display and Merck. The three companies combined will hold a market share of 56% in 2023.

At the OLED Korea conference, both Merck and Sumitomo detailed their latest OLED inkjet material performance.

Sumitomo is advancing with its R&D efforts, and the company says that its PLED materials will be adopted in mass production systems by 2020 (although JOLED already uses PLEDs in its displays).

Merck announced that is has signed a Memorandam of Understanding with China's Visionox to accelerate the development and application of OLED displays. Merck did not provide a lot of details, but it did say that this agreement markets a strategic alliance between Merck and Visionox.

Merck offers a complete portfolio of materials for OLED display and lighting devices - including evaporation and soluble materials suitable for ink jet printing.