The OLED-Info newsletter (September 17, 2022)

Huawei's Mate 50 smartphone offers a 6.7" 90Hz 1224x2700 AMOLED display, HarmonyOS 3.0, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ 4G Gen 1 chipset, 128/256/512 GB of storage, a NM memory slot and a triple camera setup.

The Mate 50 Pro offers upgraded specifications, including a 6.74" 120Hz 1212x2616 AMOLED, a stronger camera setup and more.

The Mate 50 family will launch by the end of September 2022 starting at around $700.

Apple's smartwatch range for 2022 includes three deice,s the Watch Series 8, the Watch SE (2022) and the Watch Ultra (2022). The Apple Watch Series 8 is quite similar to the Watch Series 7 - with a 41 mm 324 x 394 or 46 mm 396 x 484 1000 nits LTPO AMOLED display. Compared to its previous generation, the Watch adds an upgraded chipset, a temperature sensor, crash detection, and a new Ultra low power mode.

The Watch SE 2022 is Apple's new entry-level watch, and offers a smaller display (1.78" 1000 nits 448x368 LTPO AMOLED).

Finally, we have the new Watch Ultra (2022) which is Apple's most advanced smartwatch. It offers a large 1.92" (49 mm) 2000 nits 502 x 410 pixels LTPO AMOLED display, a Titanium case, an extra speaker, a new customizable action button and up to 36 hours of battery time (normal use).

Apple's new wearable devices will start shipping later in September 2022, starting with $249 for the Watch SE 2022 (GPS only).

Apple's 2022 smartphone range includes four devices. The iPhone 14, the basic model, has a 6.1-inch 1200 nits 1170x2532 OLED display, an Apple A15 Bionic chipset, 4 GB of RAM and 128/256/512 GB of storage. It has a dual camera setup, is eSim only (in US models) and supports emergency satellite communication.

The iPhone 14 Plus offers a larger display, 6.7-inch 1284x2778 and a larger battery.

The iPhone 14 Pro offers a 6.1" 120Hz 2000 nits 1179x2556 LTPO AMOLED display, a stronger and more power efficient A16 chipset, more memory (up to 6 GB RAM, 1 TB storage) an updated camera setup, and also a new notch design(which is actually a cut-out hole). The iPhone 14 Pro Max has a larger 6.7-inch 1290x2796 AMOLED display.

Apple will start shipping its new iPhone devices later in September 2022.

The COVID-19 pandemic created an increased demand for high quality IT solutions, including monitors and collaborative tools, which prompted OLED display makers to start offering solutions for this market for applications like computer monitors, signage and more.

OLED displays that are 20-inch or more suffer from incompatibility with standard capacitive touch, because the thin OLED panel results in large parasitic capacitive coupling with the touch surface. The dynamic driving of OLEDs (where only lit pixels draw current) further reduces the capacitive touch performance by introducing unpredictable “display pattern noise”. These issues are easily mitigated in small area displays, but as OLEDs increase in size, the performance and costs of capacitive solutions suffer.

A few weeks ago Korea-based Sewon announced that it is entering the OLED-based optical patch business, based on technology developed by Kwangbio and Korea's KAIST institute. The idea is to use OLED panels for phototherapy that can be used to treat pain and encourage skin regeneration.

Sewon E&C now announced that its OLED phototherapy patch, the first such patch in the world, has completed the FDA registration. The company now aims to accelerate the commercialization, and has already secured the site for the production facility. Sewon hopes to bring the patch to the market by the end of 2022 or early in 2023.

This is a sponsored post by INFICON

OLED producers have been struggling with the deposition of magnesium materials during the OLED production process. INFICON has developed high-level magnesium-sensitive crystals specifically for OLED deposition, that significantly shorten the initial time delay in magnesium monitoring, while maintaining high stability and reproducibility.

The following application note details INFICON crystals for OLED deposition, the development process, and the experiments the company performed to characterize and evaluate the crystal quality to make sure it offers the highest possible solution for the OLED industry.

Background

Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) is one of the most important INFICON products for organic light-emitting diode (OLED) and optical device fabrication, as well as for many other applications. The change in the QCM's resonance frequency due to mass loading by thin films allows it to be used as a surrogate for correlating the rate of the film thickness accumulation on a substrate. The design of INFICON High Precision Sensor Crystals was based upon many OLED manufacturers’ requirement of more stable crystals that are less prone to activity dips (instability in the activity signal) in controlling the deposition of OLED materials. The field performances of INFICON High Precision Sensor Crystals have shown to improve rate stability with nearly extinguished activity dips in terms of the number of occurrences as well as the magnitude when they rarely occur. Refer to the “High Precision Sensor Crystal Line Technical Note” found using this link.