JOLED (Japan OLED) was established in August 2014 by Japan Display, Sony and Panasonic with an aim to become an OLED medium display (10-30 inch) producer. JOLED is using a printing process which should result in lower cost production (but of lower performance displays) compared to evaporation printing.

JOLED's R&D Division Manager spoke at the PF&E China conference a couple of weeks ago, detailing the company's process. JOLED is producing RGB-strip OLED panels using ink-jet printers made by Panasonic and PLED materials produced by Sumitomo. The OLED structure is based on Sony's technology and the backplane is a transparent amorphous oxide semiconductor.

Researchers from the Holst Centre developed a new process to deposit semiconductor layers with better performance and high throughput than PVD-based process. the new process is based on scalable, atmospheric-pressure process spatial-ALD.

The Holst Centre used sALD to deposit IGZO backplanes that achieved charge carrier mobilities of 30 to 45 cm²/Vs. The researchers say that similar backplanes deposited with PVD (supttering) achieve about 10 cm²/Vs. The sALD layers also exhibited low off current, switch-on voltages around 0 V and excellent bias stress stability.

The Nikkei reports that JOLED aims to start producing prototype OLED panels in the second half of 2017. JOLED developed a 21.6" UHD panel and actually aims to start offering the panel in 2017 to medical monitor makers and other commercial applications.

JOLED is using a printing based process and it is estimated that production costs will be 30% to 40% lower than evaporation based processes - but the performance of soluble OLED materials are not yet up to par with evaporation materials. The panels are made on an Oxide-TFT backplane, and the process is optimized for 10 to 30 inch panels. JOLED expects to achieve mass production in FY2018 (April 2018 to March 2019).

Sharp demonstrated a new display prototype called the Corner-R, which uses the company's Free-Form IGZO LCD panel to create a display with curved corners.

From the photo above, it seems like the display is also curved around the edges like Samsung's Edge-type OLEDs, but it may be just a curved glass, I am not sure. This is just a prototype demonstration, though, it's not clear whether Sharp intents to commercialize this display.

It 2013 it was reported that TCL plans to invest over $4 billion to build a new 8.5-Gen LCD and OLED fab in Shenzhen, owned by CSOT. The so-called Huaxing Power Two OLED fab never materialized... at least until now.

TCL released information that it now seeks to $6.96 billion to build a new LCD and OLED Gen-11 production fab in Shenzhen. The new fab, built by TCL and Shenzhen Huaxing Power with help from the Shenzhen Economic and Trade Commission, will have a monthly capacity of 90,000 Gen-11 substrates (3370x2940 mm) and use IGZO backplanes.

Taiwan-based Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) is building a new 6-Gen fab in China, with an investment of about $1.85 billion. Digitimes reports that CPT plans to produce IGZO backplane OLED panels in its second phase.

The first phase production is scheduled to begin at around June 2017 (construction will be completed by the end of 2016 and equipment installation will begin in Jaunary 2017). The first phase will produce a-Si LCDs, with a monthly capacity of 30,000 substrates. Digitimes did not say when is the second phase planned, and what kind of capacity will be allocated to OLED displays.

ETNews posted an interesting story, in which it is said that Chinese display makers are diverting investments away from LCD production and into flexible OLED production. ETNews lists BOE Display, CSoT, TianMa and Visionox - all bringing forward flexible OLED plans.

Flexible OLED prototype, Tianma

Tianma and Visionox, according to ETNews, already started to make actual investment and placed initial equipment orders for flexible OLED production. BOE and CSoT decided to postpone 8-gen LCD investment plans and will start investing in flexible OLEDs by the end of 2016.

A few weeks after Sharp agreed to sell a two-thirds stake to Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision) for $3.5 billion, the Taiwanese company is starting to integrate Sharp's display business with Innolux, Foxconn Taiwanese display arm.

Innolux AMOLED prototype, 2012

Today we hear a report from Taiwan that Innolux's chairman Tuan Hsing-chien has resigned from his roles at Innolux, and will head to Sharp to help integrate the two display makers. Tuan will help Sharp and Innolux focus on IGZO backplanes and OLED diisplays - aiming to enhance the competitiveness of Sharp's LCD business - and find opportunities for cooperation between the two companies.

Japan Display (JDI) announced that it has signed a technology development agreement with Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) regarding the development of Oxide-semiconductor backplane technology for next-generation displays, including OLED displays.

SEL's backplane technology is called c-axis aligned crystal (CAAC), which has been co-developed with Sharp. CAAC is based on an IGZO thin-film that has a novel crystal structure.

Report from Japan say that Sharp developed a new 3.4" bendable OLED prototype. The AMOLED display features a resolution of 540x960 (326 PPI), it has an aperture ratio of 57% and a thickness of 70um. The bending radius is 10mm, and the whole panel weighs 2 grams. The backplane is IGZO.

While this is reported as news, this panel seems to be quite similar to OLEDs Sharp unveiled at SID 2012 (yes, almost four years ago!). According to the reports, Sharp says that the display has a long lifetime and is "color shift free", as a result of newly developed tandem structure.