OLED production

Sidtek announced that it is starting trial production of OLED microdisplays at its upcoming 12-inch fab in Wuhu, Anhui Province, China. The company is on track to initiate mass production before the end of 2024.

Sidtek is currently producing its OLED microdisplays on a 8-inch production line, also in Wuhu. The first phase of its new 12-inch fab will have a monthly capacity of 6,000 substrates, and the company is planning an expansion to 18,000 substrate (which will be ready in 2027). The total investment in the 12-inch fab (including the 2nd stage and another, third phase) is estimated at 6 billion Yuan (around $840 million USD).

According to a report from Korea, following several years if R&D, Poongwon Precision has finally achieved high enough FMM quality and production yields to receive an approval from Samsung Display. 

The company is now gearing up to start mass producing 6-Gen FMM sheets in Q3 2024, and expects to receive the first orders from Samsung Display in September. The company is also in talks with BOE and CSoT for the supply of FMM (although it seems that it will focus on SDC until at least 2027). 

The Zapp Group, which will celebrate its 325th anniversary in 2026 and has launched a major new investment project with the construction of a 12,000 m² production hall for precision foil at its Unna site, in Germany.

The company has come a long way in the past few centuries. Having started in the Leppe Valley of Germany as a small forging shop, Zapp is now a leading metals supplier and one of only a few suppliers in the world that can produce ultra-thin foil from stainless steel, cobalt nickel or titanium alloys. This major investment will further expand its dimensional spectrum down to thicknesses of up to 0.015 mm and widths of up to 650 mm.

Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) announced that it has started mass producing fine metal masks (FMM) at its new production line at Kurosaki Plant, in Fukuoka, Japan. DNP invested $140 million to expand the production line.

8-Gen and 6-Gen FMM samples (DNP)

The new production line is producing masks suitable for 8-Gen substrates. As the OLED industry is moving to expand its IT AMOLED display production for laptops, monitors and tablets, companies are building larger (8.7-Gen mostly) production lines that require these larger masks. While the company is already producing at the new fab, it will also announced that it may gradually expand production further at the new line, depending on market demand.

Lumicore showcased its groundbreaking 1.32-inch OLED microdisplay at SID Displayweek in San Jose, a digital-driven silicon microdisplay that represents a substantial advancement in the field of micro-OLED displays. This innovation promises improvements in display quality, power consumption, and production yield, making it highly suitable for AR and VR/MR applications.

Lumicore's expertise lies in its digital driving technology, which precisely controls pixel brightness in Micro-OLEDs through Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). This approach maintains a constant voltage across the OLED, preventing substantial fluctuations in current and brightness due to minor voltage changes.Compared to traditional analog driving, digital driving effectively mitigates noise interference, offering higher grayscale modulation accuracy, faster screen refresh rates, lower circuit power consumption, and reduced manufacturing costs, thereby revolutionizing the conventional technology.

Visionox is the latest company to announce a new AMOLED production line, targeting the IT display market - laptops, monitors and tablets. The company said that it will best 55 billion Yuan (around $7.6 billion USD) to build a 8.6-Gen production line in Hefei, Anhui province.

Visionox's production line will have a monthly capacity of 32,000 substrates. The company did not share any details regarding the timeline of this project, or its financing.

As OLED display makers are racing to launch IT AMOLED displays (for laptops, monitors and tablets), there has been recent reports that TCL CSoT has decided to build a 8-Gen AMOLED line, in a 63 billion Yuan (about $8.7 billion USD) investment.

TCL CSoT issued a statement that says that this report is inaccurate, and the company has not made a decision yet and does not have an investment plan. 

According to Sino Research, in the first quarter of 2024, small-to-medium AMOLED production in China surpassed the production in Korea, by shipments, for the first time. China's market share was 53.9%, an increase from 44.9% in Q4 2023.

The leading producer is still Samsung Display, with a 41% market share (down from 53.3% last year). BOE has a market share of 17%, Visionox 12%, CSoT 10%, Tianma 9% and LGD 6%. The mean reason for the rise in China production and a decline in Korea's is lower shipments to Apple and an increase in the adoption of OLEDs in Chinese smartphones. 

Germany-based Loewe announced that it has established its own OLED TV assembly line, at its headquarters in Kronach, Germany. The new facility is said to be based on a 'radically designed' production process, and it is staffed by around 200 employees. The line will begin full-scale production by the end of May.

Loewe revealed that it is buying 'open-cell' WOLED panels from LG Display - and this is the first production line in Europe that can work with such panels (as opposed to complete OLED modules used in all other EU-based lines). Working with open-cell panels enables Loewe to have more control over the process and the design of its premium TVs.

OLED microdisplay developer Seeya Technology announced that it is starting to build its second OLED microdisplay production line, in Shanghai. The company will start to move in and install the production equipment next month.

The new production line will have a monthly capacity of 9,000 300 mm substrates, similar to the company's first line which is already in mass production. The total cost of the new fab is expected to reach 2 billion Yuan (around $275 million USD).