Korea-based OLED materials maker Solus Advanced Materials has completed the construction of a new 6006 sqm plant that will produce its OLED related materials. The new plant, located at Iksan will start trial production soon.

The main materials to be produced in this new plant are high-refractive materials and  encapsulation materials. Solus plans to build a new plant in the same site, by 2024, that will produce quantum dots materials. 

Inkjet printing pioneer JOLED has filed for bankruptcy, following many years of struggles to increase production capacity and revenues.  According to earlier reports from Japan, display maker Japan Display will take over JOLED technology and remaining operations.

There are now reports from Korea that suggest that TCL's CSoT is considering buying JOLED's OLED production equipment, and moving it to China to attempt OLED production in-house using inkjet printing. If this plan goes through, the plan is to initiate production in 2024. It's not clear whether CSoT is in talks with JDI, or whether JDI did not take over the equipment from JOLED.

In 2022, Japan Display (JDI) announced that it has developed a "historic breakthrough in display technology" - a new OLED deposition process which they refer to as eLEAP, that is said to be cost effective and can be used to create freeform OLEDs that are brighter, more efficient, and longer lasting compared to OLEDs produced using mask evaporation (FMM).

Japan Display announced an agreement with China-based LCD maker HKC Corp to mass produce panels by 2025 in China, based on JDI's technology. But now it is reported that this joint venture is canceled. The report suggests that the two companies could not agree on a license fee that HKC was to pay to JDI. There is speculation that the HKC's canceled IPO and the slowdown in China's economy are to blame.

LG Display announced that it has started to mass produce 17" 2560x1920 foldable OLED laptop displays. LGD applied a tandem stack architecture, to increase the lifetime of the OLED displays, to make it suitable for the demands of laptop use.

It is likely that the recently announced HP Spectre Foldable PC uses LG's new panels.

Japan Display (JDI) plans to start producing medium-sized OLED displays, to be used in tablets and laptops. The company hopes to start producing the first panels (which will be around 14-inch in size) by 2025.

Asus ZenBook 17 Fold OLED (BOE panel)

Up until now, JDI focused on the production of wearable OLED displays, selling its panels for Apple's smartwatches since 2019. The company's production volume was limited, and so was its technology capabilities to increase production panel sizes. It will be interesting to see whether JDI hopes to also supply its future laptop/tablet panels to Apple.

LG Display has been developing OLED microdisplay technologies for several years (branding these as OLEDoS), and last year it was reported that LGD is planning to build its first production line, as hoping to supply OLED Microdisplay to Apple in the future. LG is reportedly started ordering deposition equipment from Korea-based OLED equipment maker Sunic System.

According to the Korean publication The Elec, LGD has decided not to build an OLED microdisplay production line, at least for now. The company will continue its R&D project, though.

China-based Valiant announced plans to spin-off its OLED production subsidiary, Yantai Gem Chemicals. 

Yantai Gem Chemicals was established in 2005, and it produces intermediate materials for OLED panels (and other applications). If Valiant is successful in its plan, Yantai Gem will list in Shanghai's stock exchange. Following the spin-off, it will become an independent company, while Valiant will remain the major shareholder.

LG Display showed its WOLED roadmap during the K-Display conference in Seoul, saying that it will soon start producing 32-inch (16:9), 34-inch (21:9) and 39-inch (21:9) models.  These panels are aimed for computer monitor applications, rather than TVs, although the 32-inch could also be used as a TV panel.

LGD did not detail when it expects to start producing these panels. Dough already unveiled a few weeks ago that it is working on a 32" monitor, and this will be base on an LGD WOLED panel

The OLED market is always innovating the technology industry, and the Thin Film group at INFICON is here to help OLED manufacturers grow that innovation. INFICON has developed Magnesium Sensitive OLED and High Precision Sensor Crystals, specifically for the OLED market to preserve the high stability and reproducibility of OLED processes.

The Mg Crystal Advantage

Magnesium Sensitive Crystals fill a significant gap in the manufacturing of OLED displays. Up until now, there was no solution for the difficulties of realizing fast magnesium (Mg) detection. Manufactures had to work around this delay by precoating crystals, an added step that not only adds a substantial amount of time to the process, but also wastes material, which in turn, costs more money and is not sustainable. The revolutionary development of Mg Sensitive OLED Crystals removes these unnecessary, wasteful precoating steps. The difference between current crystal products (green data) and the INFICON Mg Sensitive OLED Crystals (purple data) is substantial is shown below:

In May 2022 we reported that China-based OLED lighting developer Yeolight Technology is starting to build a 4.5-Gen OLED lighting production line, in Huaibei City, Anhui Province, China. The company is now starting to move in and install the first production equipment. The total equipment cost is estimated at 800 million Yuan (about $111 million USD). 

Yeolight says that the new fab, when complete, will have a capacity of around 7 million panels in a year, or 1.2 million automotive lighting modules (probably referring to rear light modules). This will be the world's largest OLED lighting fab, when complete.