Analysts from IHS say that as AMOLED displays continue to replace LCD displays and the AMOLED market is growing quickly - the market for fine metal mask (FMM) components will also experience fast growth in coming years.

IHS sees the FMM market in 2017 generate $234 in revenues. The market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38% until 2022 - to reach $1.2 billion. IHS says that FMM production is a challenge and FMM technology has become a bottleneck as display resolution is increasing and the number of FMM suppliers is limited. The leading producer is Dai Nippon Printing, and the company's FMM masks are using to produce the majority of AMOLED displays.

Universal Display recently announced that it is accelerating OVJP R&D, and the company is looking to commercialize this technology with partners. UDC expects it to take a few years before OVJP can really be deployed in production. The company published the video below that shows off the technology and explains the basic principles and advantages.

OVJP stands for Organic Vapor Jet Printing, and the basic idea is to use a gas-stream based process that resembles ink-jet printing but one that uses evaporation OLED materials which outperform soluble ones. In an OVJP process, the OLED materials are evaporated into a carrier gas that delivers them to a jet engine for direct printing of patterned OLED layers. OVJP is intended for large-area OLED displays and can be scaled up to 10-Gen substrates according to UDC.

OLEDON announced that it has developed a plane-source evaporation shadow mask process that can achieve a shadow distance of 0.38um - which can enable OLED display resolution to reach 2,250 PPI. The company says it technology will be able to achieve 3,300 PPI in the future.

OLEDON is not alone in the development of plane-source evaporation technology. In November 2016 Sunic Systems announced that it developed a similar AMOLED production process - that can also achieve 2,250 PPI. It may be that Sunic and OLEDON are collaborating on this, it is not clear.

Merck is going to discuss its latest soluble OLED material performance at SID DisplayWeek 2017 next month. Merck will detail the printed device efficiencies, voltages, and colors.

According to Merck, the efficiencies of its soluble OLED emitters are now comparable to state-of-the-art vapor-processed devices. Merck will also suggest a move from an evaporated blue common layer device architecture to a printed blue.

Digitimes reports that TCL-subsidiary China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSoT) has decided to construct a 6-Gen LTPS flexible AMOLED production line in Wuhan, China, in a $5.08 billion investment.

The new fab will have a monthly capacity of 45,000 substrates and will start trial production of small to medium sized flexible OLEDs in Q2 2019.

IHS says that the OLED industry is now entering a huge capacity-growth phase, and IHS estimates that the AMOLED production equipment market will reach $9.5 billion in revenues in 2017.

Almost half of that amount will go to TFT backplane equipment ($4.4 billion in 2017), while the organic layer deposition market will reach 2.2 billion and the encapsulation tools market will reach $1.2 billion. IHS estimates that Canon Tokki is the leader in OLED deposition equipment, and has a market share of over 50%.

Researchers from Kyushu University discovered that lifetime of OLED displays is compromised during the evaporation production process due to small amounts of impurities in the vacuum chamber.

The researchers examined the production process and found that there are many impurities floating in the vacuum even when the deposition chamber is at room temperature. They found a strong correlation between the time the OLED is placed in the deposition chamber and its lifetime.

Last week we posted that Japan Display is set to raise its stake in JOLED for $100 million, following a $650 million USD cash injection from INCJ to grow its LCD and OLED business. JDI today confirmed this plan. The company received 45 billion yen ($382 million US) from INCJ in the form of unsecured subordinated convertible bonds and these funds will be used for R&D expenses on printing OLED technologies (and will probably include the $100 million for JOLED).

JDI also received 30 billion yen (about $255 million US) from INCJ in the form of subordinated loan, and this money will go towards OLED R&D in the field of evaporation OLED technologies.

UBI Research predicts that OLED TVs produced using a solution-based process will start to appear in the market in 2019. Evaporation-processed WOLED TVs will still be the market leader with a 85% market share (of the total OLED TVs) in 2021.

Solution-based OLED emitters are not as efficient or long-lasting as evaporation OLEDs, but ink-jet printing will enable to reduce costs compared to evaporation, and for OLED TVs this can make business sense, especially as a WOLED (WRGB) structure is less efficient than a direct-emission RGB architecture. UBI sees solution-based OLEDs competing with WRGB OLEDs for the mid-range TV market, not the premium one.

Samsung Display recently confirmed that it is still developing large-sized OLED panels, and a couple of weeks ago it was reported that Samsung is discussing a large investment (around $3 billion US) into a new OLED TV panel fab.

New reports from Korea gives more details about Samsung's OLED TV plans. Samsung is actually considering a slightly larger investment - around $3.3 billion in a new fab, with an aim to enable Samsung Electronics to launch OLED TVs by 2018. Samsung is looking to build a Gen-8 (2200x2500 mm, or six 55" panels) fab - and will need to start ordering equipment soon. The new fab will enable Samsung to produce about 495,000 square meters in 2017 (7,500 monthly substrates) and over 2 million square meters in 2018.