The OLED-Info newsletter November 2015
Published: Wed, 12/02/15
LG announces a new $9 billion OLED fab - and more
LG Display announced a "historical investment" for the display industry - the Korean company will build a new OLED display plant in Paju, Korea. The P10 fab will mainly make large-size OLED TV panels (Gen-9 lines) and flexible OLED panels - but LGD also expect to produce future display technologies such as transparent OLEDs at the new plant. The first production line is scheduled for mass production in the first half of 2018.
The total investment in the P10 plant is estimated at $8.7 billion USD. The first phase (which covers the construction of the building, the foundations for the clean rooms and infrastructure) will begin this year and will require an investment of $1.6 billion USD.
In August 2015 LG Display announced plans to invest around $8.5 billion in OLED capacity in the next three years as the company shifts its focus to OLED displays, and LG already committed to the E5 Gen-6 flexible AMOLED fab in Gumi (in a KRW1 trillion, or $900 million USD investment). It seems that LGD is accelerating its OLED investment plans, as this new fab alone exceeds the original investment plans.
According to some reports, Apple made the decision to switch to OLED displays in future iPhones - indeed in 2018. Apple is said to be in talks with suppliers to secure the huge capacity required (over 200 million displays, for the iPhone alone). This may be one of the reasons LG decided to make this huge commitment. Regardless of Apple, it seems that LGD already made the decision to go into the OLED display market for mobile devices.
LG also announced it installed a huge 13x8 meter OLED display at Seoul's Incheon airport, made from 140 individual 55" OLED TV displays. LG says this is the world's largest OLED display - as they consider this to be a single display. Those 55" OLEDs are 4K panels - which means that there are 290 million pixels in total. This looks like a beautiful display - and hopefully a great showcase of LG's OLED technology.
ITRI developed a highly efficient blue OLED emitter
Taiwan's ITRI research institute developed a long-lasting OLED blue emitter. The researchers used a green phosphorescent emitter with a new double metal structure - that emits a blue light. The so-called Plasmon-Coupled Organic Light Emitting Diode (PCOLED) structure's lasts 27 times as long as a blue fluorescent emitter.
The researchers explain that a regular green phosphorescent emitter always emits a very weak emission. By using the double-metal structure, more plasmons are generated which means a larger blue emission. This is not an up-conversion process - but merely a change in conditions within the green material. This condition was actually discovered by accident.
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An OLED iPhone by 2018?
In the past months we've heard many reports and rumors regarding Apple's choice of displays for future iPhones. One of the major reasons the Apple finds it difficult to switch to OLED is that Apple sells around 200 million iPhones in a year - and there's simply not enough OLED production capacity for that. New reports from Japan say that Apple does indeed want to switch to OLEDs - and is in talks with suppliers to secure the capacity and increase the lifetime and performance of OLEDs.
According to Japan's Nikkey, Apple's target is to adopt OLEDs by 2018. This is certainly enough time for Samsung Display, LG Display and perhaps JOLED or other display makers to get ready and make the investments required to have the capacity ready for Apple.
I do not know if these reports are true... but as OLEDs are becoming better and better than LCDs, and as flexible OLEDs are entering the market and changing the design options for mobile phones, it's highly likely that Apple will have no choice but to switch to OLED eventually. It also makes sense for Apple to start talking to suppliers years in advance as this undertaking means an investment of billions in production capacity.
In unrelated news (or, maybe, related?) the US PTO published a new patent application from Apple that describes an OLED display with a built-in fingerprint reader. The idea is that integrating Near Infrared (NIR) emitters and detectors between the OLED subpixels will enable a much thinner design compared to separate display and detector layers. This also means that there is no need to have a separate reader in the home button as in current iPhones.
Perovskites - the future of solar panels, batteries and displays?
OLED-Info takes great pride in inviting its readers to check out Perovskite-Info.com, our new site focused on perovskite developments, applications and market. We treat it with the same amount of care and deliberation as our other sites, to bring you only the best and most up-to-date picture of the happenings in the field.
Perovskites are a fascinating group of materials that share a similar structure and display a myriad of exciting properties like superconductivity, magnetoresistance and more. These easily synthesized materials are considered the future of solar cells, as their distinctive structure makes them perfect for enabling low-cost, efficient photovoltaics. They are also predicted to play a role in next-gen electric vehicle batteries, sensors, displays, lasers and much more.
Visit Perovskite-Info.com to learn all about the materials that are hoped to be a part of our future. Get the latest news from leading companies and keep current with research innovations and discoveries in this exciting field.
Updated OLED market reports
In November we published new editions of all our market reports - that cover the transparent, automotive, microdisplay and flexible OLED markets. OLED-Info provides comprehensive niche OLED market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about the niche market, and can be useful if you want to understand how the OLED industry works and what this technology can provide for your own industry.
New OLED Auditorium presentations
In November we added two new OLED Auditorium presentations. The OLED Auditorium includes presentations from BASF, IDTechEx, Konica Minolta, LG Chem, Visionox, OLED-Info, Graphene-Info and more!
- LG Chem: A world of OLED light
- Kyushu University: TADF emitters
OLEDWorks completed its OLED lighting acquisition (announced in April 201) - that includes Philips's production facility located in Aachen, Germany, and relevant IP. OLEDWorks also announced that Lumiblade FL300 L, a rectangular (46x222 mm) FL300 variant announced in April 2015, is finally shipping.
Visionox developed a new high-density (2560x1440, 4.85-inch, 604 PPI) AMOLED panel. The new panel was deposited using FMM / VTE and it uses Visionox's Z-Type AMOLED RGB sub-pixel arrangement first demonstrated in 2014.
Futaba's film-type PMOLED range now includes three products, including a 1.4-inch full-color 128x16 PMOLED that will enter mass production soon
Universal Display reported revenues of $39.4 million (up from $32.9 million in Q3 2014) and net income of $7 million (up from $4.3 million in Q3 2014). The company forecasts that free cash flow will reach $100 million in 2015, double that of 2014.
OSRAM strategic plan includes a €2 billion investment in current and future lighting applications - including lasers, LEDs and OLEDs for automobiles.
Merck revealed the development results of their phosphorescent materials, comparing them to UDC's materials.
The two companies will cooperate in OLED manufacturing and each company will be allowed to develop, manufacture and sell OLED materials using the other company's patents.
Planar is now accepting pre-orders for these transparent displays (which are most likely produced by Samsung Display), with mass production beginning in February 2016.
Check out this nice video that shows LG Chem's collaboration with 3D printer maker 3D-Box, and how easy it is to produce a 3D-printed OLED lighting lamp
The Taiwanese government decided to fund WiseChip and National Tsing-Hua University's blue-light free OLED development - awarding the company with about $300,000 USD each year for two years, as WiseChip aims to mass produce the 1,900K OLEDs.
An entry-level smartphone for the Chinese market with a 5-inch 720p Super AMOLED display
An android smartphone with a 5.5-inch 720p AMOLED display
An entry-level APS-C digital camera with a 0.39-inch 800x600 OLED EVF
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