Solution based OLEDs - Page 12

Update: It turns out that DuPoint's facility will only produce materials, not any kind of display panels...

DuPont announced that it is building a $30 million OLED TV pilot production line at its Stine-Haskell Research Center off Elkton Road in Newark. DuPont will allocate 26 engineers and 9 professional works for the project. Delaware announced it will allocate $920,000 grant from the Delaware Strategic Fun to help fund this project. It isn't likely that DuPont actually considers establishing a full-scale OLED TV production facility in the US, the aim is probably to develop manufacturing technology.

DuPont's new pilot line will use their nozzle-printing (or "spray-printing") technology which uses a continuous stream of ink (unlike the droplets used in regular inkjet printing) to deposit OLED materials. This is a very fast process - DuPont says it can print a 50" TV in under 2 minutes, but the display isn't optimized in the sub-pixel level and is so less efficient than in other patterning technologies. But the faster throughput can lead to cheaper displays - in fact DuPont claims that this technology may make an OLED TV cheaper than an LCD TV.

DuPont posted their financial results for 4Q 2011 (small decline in 4Q earnings and record annual earnings) - and the company recorded $20 million income from OLED technology licensing. Back in November 2011 DuPont announced that it has signed a licensing agreement with a leading Asian AMOLED maker - for the OLED nozzle printing technology, which will be used to make OLED TVs. The $20 million (or at least parts of it) may be fees for that license.

DuPont 4.3-inch printed OLED prototype

DuPont's nozzle-printing (or "spray-printing") technology uses a continuous stream of ink (unlike the droplets used in regular inkjet printing) to deposit OLED materials. This is a very fast process - DuPont says it can print a 50" TV in under 2 minutes, but the display isn't optimized in the sub-pixel level and is so less efficient than in other patterning technologies. But the faster throughput can lead to cheaper displays - in fact DuPont claims that this technology may make an OLED TV cheaper than an LCD TV.

The Holst Centre and imec announced a new high-resolution flexible OLED displays research program. This new program builds on the existing research fields such Organic and Oxide Transistors and Flexible OLED lighting. The new program aims to develop an economically scalable route to flexible AMOLED mass production, facing challenges such as high resolution, low power consumption, large area, outdoor readability, flexibility and light weight.

The partners will develop a mechanically flexible encapsulation film and TFT backplane, a printed high-efficiency OLED, new materials and processes that will allow cheaper production at better quality and driver design. They will also develop a new manufacturing equipment such as fine patterning equipment for backplanes and tools for integrated roll-to-roll manufacturing. This new program follows up on the FLAME project. Above you can see a prototype Polymer-Vision made flexible OLED made together with imec and the Holst Center.

Peter Misek, an analyst at Jefferies says that he believes that Apple decided to buy iPad 3, iPhone 5 and TV display panels from Sharp. At first these will be IGZO based LCDs - which will be brighter, clearer, thinner and more efficient than existing LCDs. But Misek also believes that Sharp and Apple will jointly develop OLED displays (probably IGZO based as well) within 1-2 years which will be used in future iPhone and iPad generations. OLED TV panels aren't expected until 2015.

Misek says that the two companies are working towards a new printing technology for producing these small/medium OLED panels - and that a pilot line will be in place by middle 2012 for testing purposes. Full production will be possible in 2013. The new technology, according to Misek, is a combination of inkjet printing and a daisy wheel. The daisy wheel is an impact printing technology and I'm not sure how it relates to OLEDs.

A few weeks ago we reported that Sumitomo Chemical began construction of a PLED material factory (which will be operational in 2012) in a several billion yen investment. These materials are aimed towards large panel (OLED TV) production. Today we have a new report that say that Sumitomo made a breakthrough in its PLED material technology - which will eventually enable production cost to be slashed by up to 50% (compared to SM-OLED based displays).

Sumitomo 6.5-inch AMOLED prototype

The annual output of their new Osaka plant will be enough to produce 4-5 million 40" OLED TVs. Sumitomo plans to offer these materials to TV makers in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. PLEDs (or Polymer-OLEDs, sometimes called PLED too) are OLED devices made from polymer (large-molecules) materials and are more easily adapted for printing (solution-processable) compared to Small-Molecule OLEDS (SM-OLEDs). Some companies believe that PLEDs are the best way to create large OLED panels using printing methods. You can read more about PLEDs here.

Universal Display reported their 3Q 2011 financial results: net income (and cash flow) of $6 million (this is the first profitable quarter for the company) on revenues of $21.8 million (an increase of 208% compared to 3Q 2010). Commercial revenue was $9.9 million and development revenue was $11.9 million.

Host Materials

UDC has started to offer OLED host materials to complement their emitter materials. They enjoyed high host material sales in this quarter ($7.8 million) - but this is a competitive market as several companies are offering the same kind of materials. The company said that they are looking to "expand the R&D and material business outside of emitters and to other aspects of the stack". Back in March when UDC raised $250 million it was rumored that the company is looking to acquire a company (Novaled was the leading candidate according to the rumors) to expand their business in that way.

DuPont announced that it has signed a OLED production technology licensing agreement with a leading Asian AMOLED maker. This technology will be used to make large size OLED TV panels. We don't have any financial details on this agreement, but a leading asian AMOLED maker probably means Samsung, LG or Sony. In fact Bloomberg claims that the company is probably Samsung (which makes sense).

DuPont 4.3-inch printed OLED prototype

DuPont's nozzle-printing (or "spray-printing") technology uses a continuous stream of ink (unlike the droplets used in regular inkjet printing) to deposit OLED materials. This is a very fast process - DuPont says it can print a 50" TV in under 2 minutes, but the display isn't optimized in the sub-pixel level and is so less efficient than in other patterning technologies. But the faster throughput can lead to cheaper displays - in fact DuPont claims that this technology may make an OLED TV cheaper than an LCD TV.

Update: we have some more information about this upcoming plant, read more here

Sumitomo Chemical have began construction of a PLED material factory in Osaka, Japan. The company says that this plant will start mass-production of high-performance P-OLED materials in 2012. Total investment will be a several billion yen (a billion yen is about $12 million).

Sumitomo 6.5-inch AMOLED prototype

According to the report, these materials will be used for OLED TV production. Interestingly, back in 2009 Sumitomo said that 2012 will be the year when OLED TV finally takes off...

HP has developed a new method to produce large AMOLED panels, based on roll-to-roll manufacturing. They say that one of the biggest challenges to make flexible OLEDs is the alignment on large area flexible substrates. The new solution uses self-aligned imprint lithography (SAIL) to laminate a well-defined micro OLED (µOLED) frontplane unto a flexible active matrix amorphous silicon TFT backplane.

SAIL process flow

HP says they already built a proof-of-concept AMOLED device - which contains a flexible µOLED frontplane with OLED sizes of 50 µm on PET and active matrix backplane on polyimide with pixel pitches of 1 mm. The company claims that the new method will enable large area OLEDs at a very low cost.

There are reports that Seiko Epson and Tokyo Electron are planning to launch an OLED TV production project, in a ¥2-3 billion ($20-40 million) investment. The companies are still considering several options for this plant, but apparently they want to begin installing equipment sometime in 2013, with "full scale mass production" in 2013. This seems a very small investment, so we're not sure if this is indeed mass production or just a pilot line.

Espon 14-inch Inkjet processed OLED

The reports says that this will be a 6-Gen plant. Tokyo Electron and Seiko Epson announced their plans to co-develop OLED TV printing technology back in November 2010.