Universal Display announced that next week during SID DisplayWeek it will demonstrate, for the first time, a PHOLED display device that was produced using the company's OVJP process at its recently-installed pilot line system.
The green OVJP device features a lifetime of over 50,000 hours (LT95) at 1,000 nits. At the tradeshow UDC will also show its latest commercial and development red, yellow, green and blue phosphorescent material systems in its "eco-friendly PHOLED Garden".
In 2010 Universal Display announced a new AMOLED display architecture called RGB1B2 that uses two blue sub-pixels - a fluorescent deep-blue and a phosphorescent light blue. The introduction of a light blue sub-pixel can significantly extend the operational lifetime of an OLED display and reduce the display's power consumption by as much as 33%.
The RGB1B2 was never adopted (one of the reasons is that adding another sub pixel complicates the TFT backplane and has other disadvantages - but the architecture is now again on the table and UDC presented it again at OLED Korea 2019.
Universal Display announced that it has signed an OLED evaluation agreement with Wuhan China Star Optoelectronics Semiconductor Display Technology (CSOT). UDC will supply CSOT with proprietary UniversalPHOLED phosphorescent OLED materials for display applications. UDC did not disclose any more details about the agreement.
Towards the end of 2018, CSOT, a subsidiary of TCL, started construction on its T7 large-area display production fab. The T7 fab, which has a total cost of around 42.7 billion Yuan ($6.15 billion USD), will produce both LCD and OLED displays on IGZO backplanes. CSOT's plan is to start production by the end of 2020 - with real mass production starting in 2021.
Universal Display reported its financial results for Q4 2018 - with revenues of $70.1 million and a net income of $19.2 million. UDC increased its quarterly dividend to $0.1 per share, and expects its 2019 revenues to be in the range of $325 to $350 million.
UDC recently adopted a new accounting standard (ASC 606) which lowers its revenue and income in the early stage of each royalty and material sales contact.
Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) led by Mark E. Thompson (who was the first to report on efficient phosphorescent OLEDs, later commercialized at UDC) developed a new copper-based phosphorescent OLED emitter compound, that could have several advantages to the currently-used iridium compounds.
The researchers say that copper-based emitters could be cheaper (as iridium is an expensive and rare element) - but more importantly could be the key to develop an efficient and long-lasting blue OLED emitter.
Universal Display announced an OLED evaluation agreement with China-based OLED Microdisplay producer Seeya Information Technology. UDC will supply Seeya with its phosphorescent OLED materials for display applications. The two companies did not disclose any more details.
In September 2017 Seeya announced plans to build an OLED microdisplay production line in Hefei, China. Seeya's fab will have a yearly capacity of 20 million displays, and will require an investment of almost $300 million USD.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Jilin University discovered that radical-based OLEDs feature highly efficient emission - in fact they believe that this discovery could be an elegant solution to the problem of in-efficient OLED emission.
First-generation OLED emitters (fluorescent emitters) have a maximum internal quantum efficiency of 25% - as only a quarter of the electrons are in a singlet-state (that emit light) while 75% of the electrons are in a triplet-state. Current ways to achieve 100% IQE are either based on doping with heavy metals (phosphorescent emission) or either based on delayed fluorescence (TADF).
Universal Display reported its financial results for Q3 2018. Revenues increased 26% from last year, to reach $77.6 million (material sales increased 9% to $51.2 million). Net income was $22.8 million (up from $13.5 million in Q3 2017).
UDC lowered its 2018 revenue guidance to $240-250 million. Even though the market has picked up in the quarter for its major customers (SDC and LGD), UDC's revenues and guidance disappointed investors.
DSCC estimates that Samsung will begin pilot production of QD-OLEDs in 2019, with a capacity of 5,000 monthly 8.5-Gen substrates. If this is successful, Samsung will double the capacity in 2020 and add a further 30,000 yearly substrates in 2021 and again in 2022. Material revenues for Samsung's QD-OLED TVs will reach $56 million in 2022.
DSCC admits, though, that as Samsung faces several technical challenges before it could launch commercial QD-OLED TVs, its forecast could be way off - there's a good chance that SDC will cancel the project, or it could increase capacity at a much faster rate than DSCC estimates and even scale-up production to 10.5-Gen.
Universal Display reported its financial results for Q2 2018 - with revenues of $56.1 million and a net profit of $10.8 million (without the impact of UDC's new accounting system, the revenues would have been $73.6 million and the net income $25.1 million).
UDC says that the first quarter was the bottom for material shipments for 2018, in Q2 materials sales improved and the company believes that the second half of 2018 will see more growth as it anticipates new OLED smartphones from leading brands - including Apple, Google, Samsung and more. UDC estimates that for 2019, the install base of OLED capacity by meters will increase by around 50% compared to 2017.