DisplaySearch says that the AMOLED market is expected to grow almost tenfold from 2012 (2.3 million square meters) to 2016 (22 million square meters). DisplaySearch are basing their forecast on planned investments, and they say that most of the capacity increase will be driven by OLED TV production.

While Samsung has been successful in improving yields for small OLED production (to an almost-LCD level) and thus enabling an only 30% premium over LCDs, producing large OLED panels is still very expensive - mainly due to low yields and high material costs.

Last month we reported that Nanomarkets released a new report titled OLED Materials Markets 2012, analyzing the opportunities for OLED materials suppliers in both the display and lighting sectors over the next eight years. Today Nanomarkets announced that they will host a Q&A session on that report on September 6 at 10:00 AM EDT (-5:00 GMT).

During the free session Nanomarkets analysts will present the findings from the report (the main one being the forecast that the total OLED material market will grow from $524 million in 2012 to over $7.4 billion in 2019). The author of the report (Dr, Jill Simpson) will present her insights into the opportunities available to suppliers of materials used in OLED panels and how the supply chain and overall market is evolving.

There are reports suggesting that the upcoming Galaxy Note 2 will feautre a 5.5" YOUM flexible OLED panel. The display will not be bendable though. It will be based on a plastic (polymide) substrate and will be virtually unbreakable. It will also be thinner than current AMOLEDs by around 0.4 mm - which will enable Samsung to use a biggest battery.

We do know that Samsung has plans to launch flexible YOUM panels by the end of the 2012, I'm not sure if the first screen they'll produce will be a large 5.5" panel. In any case, we don't have a lot to wait - Samsung confirmed that the new Note will be announce on August 29.

There's an interesting report that LG Electronics will use their plant in Kobierzyce, near Wroclaw, to assemble their upcoming OLED TVs. The report is a bit confusing, but from what I understand the OLED panels themselves will be made in Korea and will only be assembled in Poland.

They are talking about very low numbers - a few thousand units per year. This correlates with earlier reports that both LG and Samsung will only be able to produce around 20,000 OLED TVs in 2012.

Universal Display reported their financial results for Q2 2012, with a record revenues of $30 million (up 167% compared to 2Q 2011). This includes the $15 million license payment from Samsung (paid twice a year). Net income was $11 million. UDC says that the number of customers purchasing OLED materials increased about 40% from 2Q 2011. Following are some notes from the conference call (during which Steve Abramson, UDC's president and CEO, mentioned OLED-Info four times):

Fujiflim's OLED IP acquisition

Regarding the recent $105 million purchase of Fujifilm's OLED IP portfolio, UDC says that half of these patents relate to device architecture, and the rest covers OLED materials - host, transport and phosphorescent emitters (including iridium and platinum). The company does not expect the patent purchase to generate revenue (in license or material sales) in the near term.

In order to have a truly flexible device, a flexible OLED display is not enough - all the rest of the components must also be flexible. Researchers from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Institute (KAIST) have managed to develop a high-performance Lithium-ion flexible battery.

The researchers structured the Lithium-Ion with high density inorganic thin films by using a universal transfer approach. They fabricated the battery on a mica substrate (at high annealing temperature) and then transferred it onto polymer substrates using a simple physical delamination of sacrificial substrates. They are currently trying to use a laser lift-off technology to facilitate the mass production such batteries and also enable stacking the structures to enhance the density.

Aixtron launched a new Polymer Vapor Phase Deposition (PVDP) R&D system for flexible organic thin film material deposition. The PRODOS-200 features high deposition rates, high contour conformity of the deposited layers and unrestricted scalability based on Aixtron's Close Coupled Showerhead technology. The substrate size is up to 200x200 mm².

Aixtron says that the new system can be used to develop new processes (or improve existing ones) in organic electronics that may enable the creation of new conductive and flexible layers, manipulation of surface properties and flexible barrier layers.The new system is compatible with Aixtron's OVPD R&D line equipment, and so can be used to create new compounds for OLEDs, OPVs and OTFTs.

A few months ago Samsung said that the new Galaxy S3 has a Pentile display (a 4.8" 1280x720 HD Super AMOLED one to be exact) because PenTile increased the lifetime of OLED panels. I have discussed this with Joel Pollack, an Executive VP at Nouvoyance (Samsung's company that developed the PenTile matrix scheme), and he explains this claim further.

An OLED display is made from colored (RGB) sub pixels. A blue OLED has the lowest luminous efficiency (lower then red and green) and so needs to be driven at higher current - which means a lower lifetime.

eMagin has won a new contract from the US Navo to develop a high-brightness 2000x2000 OLED microdisplay for aircraft cockpits. The first stage of this project (worth $1.1 million) will begin immediately, until September 2012. Then a second $1.3 million stage will begin and will run for 12 months. eMagin hopes that this contract will lead to adoption of OLED microdisplays for the first time in day-time avionics operation.

An eMagin OLED microdisplay

eMagin explains that in contrast to night vision goggles, which require a low brightness display so that military personnel can transition more easily from wearing the goggles to the light of their actual surroundings, aircraft cockpit displays require a very high brightness in order to be seen anytime during the day.

Japan Display (the new small/medium display maker that merged Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba's businesses) announced it will join Kyushu University OPERA center in its OLED research project.

The OPERA center (or the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronic Research) project (titled "Challenges for superior organic EL devices and innovative materials for the devices") is very broad - from basic research to application and development, including synthesis of new luminescent materials, device fabrication and elementary technology for display panel production processing.