OLEDWorks announced that it plans to increase capacity in its OLED lighting fab in Lyell Avenue, Rochester, NY. OLEDWorks will invest $73.6 million in the new production line, and the company will get $2.5 million in state tax credits. OLEDWorks said it will hire 100 new employees for this fab "over the next five years".

A couple of months ago OLEDWorks announced it will acquire the key parts of Philips OLED lighting business, including the OLED lighting production fab in Aachen, Germany. It seems that OLEDWorks intends to operate two production lines - in the US and in Germany. Financial details of that deal have not been disclosed - it'll be interesting to see where OLEDWorks will get the money for the acquisition and the new fab in Rochester.

OLEDWorks, established in July 2010 by former Kodak OLED business experts, is a US-based OLED lighting maker (the only OLED lighting producer in the US, actually). The company developed a proprietary low-cost production process.In 2013 the company successfully completed its Series A fund raising, and the company received three DoE grants (see here, here and here) to further develop is OLED technology.

In July 2014, Acuity Brands unveiled new use cases for its Marker OLED luminaire, which uses Amber OLED panels made by OLEDWorks. The Amber OLED panel emits light at a 590 nm peak, and has a fixed luminance of 600 cd/m². Those OLEDs are free of blue wavelengths - which disrupt circadian rhythms. Acuity Brands says these features makes it ideal for night lighting in healthcare applications.

BOE Display is stepping up its OLED program - the company is constructing a 5.5-Gen LTPS fab in Ordos, which will also produce both LCDs and AMOLED displays, it is starting to build a $3.5 billion Gen-6 LTPS LCD/AMOLED production line in Chengdu, and it is also planning a 8.5 OLED TV fab in Hefei Xinzhan.

Last week BOE demonstrated several new AMOLED prototypes. First up we have a 9.55" flexible transparent panel, which is probably the largest such panel ever demonstrated. It features a resolution of 640x432, a curvature radius of 10 mm and 30% transmittance. The whole panel is just 150 micrometer thick.

The second panel is a large 13.3" glass-based panel that features a WQHD (2560x1600) resolution. It uses a backplane based on a new oxide material which BOE refers to as Oxide BCE. Next we have a smaller 4.8" 480x800 flexible AMOLED that BOE says can be used as an armband wearable display.

The final panel is the least exciting one, but the one probably closest to commercialization - a 5" FHD AMOLED display. In SID 2014, BOE demonstrated 55" 4K OLED TV prototypes, produced at the pilot line in Hefei. It seems that this year BOE did not display any OLED TVs though.

Samsung Display unveiled new large-size mirror and transparent OLED display panels. Together with jewelry company Chow Sang Sang Samsung exhibited the two display in an exhibit that shows the promise of such displays in the commercial and retail markets.

The idea behind the virtual-fitting room exhibition is that those displays can provide a "digital viewing platform" to enhance the consumer's purchasing experience. The displays are integrated with Intel's Real Sense technology and 3D cameras to allow consumers to virtually see clothes or other items in a realistic perspective.

Technically, those two panels are 55" in size with a Full-HD resolution, and are probably based on the same transparent OLED panel. The Mirror OLED features more than 75 reflectance - SDC says it is over 50% higher than competitive LCD Mirrors. In addition, the OLEDs offer a better color gamut, a much higher contrast ratio and much faster response times.

The transparent OLED features 45% transmittance - again SDC says this is much higher than transparent LCDs that typically offer 10% transmittance. It is not clear how close are these two new displays to actual commercialization. We might see Samsung supply some limited amount of panels to select retail places, but the company's current large-area OLED capacity is limited.

A few months ago Planar demonstrated a 55" FHD transparent OLED, without disclosing the actual display maker. I estimated the display was developed LG Display, but I also heard it was made by SDC. I guess now it is pretty much confirmed that SDC is behind those 55" FHD panels.

Samsung is seeing much higher demand for the Galaxy S6 Edge, and they cannot produce enough flexible OLEDs. According to the OLED Association, Samsung Display will triple its flexible OLED production capacity - from around 3 million monthly panels to about 8-9 million by the end of the year.

Interestingly, while earlier reports suggested that SDC started producing at its new 6.5-Gen A3 flexible OLED fab sooner then planned, The OLED-A says that Samsung decided to first expand production at the older 5.5-Gen A2 flexible fab - mostly because yields at the smaller fab are better.

The OLED-A further says (and it makes sense) that following the S6 Edge's success, Samsung decided to adopt a flexible OLED in their upcoming flagship phones, the Note 5 and the Galaxy S7. Samsung believes that the competition is catching up to the Edge screen, and so they are also developing foldable panels - but this isn't really news.

China's Visionox say they have started to mass produce the company's first AMOLED panel, a 5.5" display aimed towards the mid/high smartphone market. While the company did not reveal any technical specifications, it's likely that this is a Full-HD panel.

Visionox's Gen-5.5 AMOLED line can currently produce 4,000 monthly substrate, and once yields stabilize they will reach a full capacity of 15,000 monthly substrates.

Visionox is the latest display maker to mass produce AMOLEDs, following SDC (which currently produces 140,000 monthly Gen-5.5 substrates), China's EverDisplay (with a capacity of 15,000 Gen-4.5 substrates), and Taiwan's AU Optronics, also has a Gen-4.5 line but production volume is unclear at the moment. LG display is also mass producing AMOLED panels for TV applications and flexible AMOLEDs for smartphones and wearables.

AU Optronics announced that their 1.4" circular AMOLED display is now in mass production. The company already said before it was qualified by a Tier-1 Chinese customer - which could mean Huawei with their circular 1.4" AMOLED smartwatch. AUO also demonstrated a new 1.3" circular flexible AMOLED on a plastic substrate that is only 0.25 mm thick.

AUO has been struggling with AMOLED production for years, but finally in August 2014 the company started mass production. The company currently offers four panels (from 1.63" to 5.46"). Please contact us if you want to find a supplier for these OLEDs.

AU Optronics is producing those new panels at their AFPD Gen-4.5 LTPS fab in Singapore that has been converted to AMOLED production. The company's production capacity is quite limited.

Merck announced it has began to construct a new €30 Million ($34 million) OLED production plant in Darmstadt, Germany. This plant will produce high-purity OLED materials for display and lighting systems. Production will begin in the 2,000 square-meter building in July 2016.

Merck hopes that the new plan to help it become a leading supplier of OLED materials by 2018, as the company believes that OLED will take a significant share of the display market, and Merck plans to become a total solution provider and not just a material maker. Merck's OLED chief recently said that he believes that Samsung will soon start producing OLED TVs again.

Merck has recently inaugurated an OLED application center in Korea, where it will introduce advanced processes such as inkjet printing. The same site also hosts Merck's Chemical Application Centre established in 2011. Merck also operates a technology development center in Taiwan - which also focuses on OLEDs.