Vacuum evaporation

IHS: the AMOLED FMM market will reach $1.2 billion in sales in 2021

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.

AMOLED FMM revenue forecast (2017-2022, IHS)

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.

Read the full story Posted: Jul 18,2017

UDC accelerates its OVJP R&D, shows how the process works

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.

Read the full story Posted: Jul 07,2017 - 1 comment

OLEDON developed a 0.38um shadow mask technology that enables 2,250 PPI

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 plane source FMM evaporator slide (SID 2017)

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.

Read the full story Posted: Jun 04,2017

Merck - printed red, green and blue OLED efficiencies are now comparable to vapor-processed ones

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.

Read the full story Posted: Apr 21,2017 - 2 comments

IHS sees the OLED production equipment market reaching $9.5 billion in 2017

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.

AMOLED equipment revenue (2015-2018, IHS)

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%.

Read the full story Posted: Feb 10,2017

Vacuum chamber impurities found to decrease the lifetime of OLED panels

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.

Vacuum impurities effect on OLEDs (Kyushu)

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.

Read the full story Posted: Dec 29,2016

JDI secures $635 million from INCJ to grow its OLED business and up its stake at JOLED

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 JOLED business plan (December 2016)

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.

Read the full story Posted: Dec 21,2016

UBI: solution-processed OLED TVs to emerge by 2019

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.

WOLED vs  solution-processed OLED TV market (2017-2021, UBI)

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.

Read the full story Posted: Nov 30,2016

A new report sheds more light on Samsung's upcoming OLED TV fab

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.

Read the full story Posted: Feb 29,2016