According to a new report from China, BOE Display will build a Gen-6 LTPS AMOLED fab in Chengdu, China. The new fab will have a monthly capacity of 45,000 glass substrates and will produce small sized AMOLED panels for mobile devices.

BOE signed an investment agreement with Chengdu's municipal government for this new fab, which will require an investment of 22 billion RMB (almost $3.6 billion USD). Construction will begin in Q2 2015, and mass production will begin in H1 2017.

According to Digitimes Research, the prices of OLED TVs will be double that of UHD (4K) LCD TVs through 2016. Digitimes expects over 17.8 million UHD TVs to be sold in 2014 - up 475% from 2013. More than half of all UHD TVs will ship to the Chinese market.

LG 65-inch UHD OLED TV

LG is still the only OLED TV maker, and recently the company started a major marketing push of UHD OLED TVs in China. LG's 65" UHD OLED TV is also shipping in the US for $10,000. LG keeps lowering the prices of their OLED TVs, but of course the prices of UHD LCD TVs will also get lower. 

LG released the G Watch R smartwatch last week in Korea (for 352,000 Won, or $330). A Korean retailer is now offering this circular flexible OLED Android Wear smartphone in the US via Amazon.com for $398.

The G Watch R uses a 1.3" (320x320) flexible plastic-based OLED panel, Android Wear OS, a 1.2 Ghz Snapdragon 400 CPU, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. It has a 410 mAh battery which should last about a single day.

Nanomarkets released a new report covering the transparent OLED display market (Transparent OLED Displays 2014) in which they forecast that the market will be dominated by LCDs in the next several years, but OLED participation will rapidly pick up. By 2019, transparent OLED display sales will reach almost $150 million, and this will grow to almost $700 million by 2021.

There are still some major challenges on the road to transparent OLEDs, but these issues are gradually being solved. The major challenges, according to Nanomarkets, are ITO replacement and excessive light loss compensation.

Germany-based AIXTRON is a leading deposition equipment provider for the semiconductor industries - used for a wide range of applications, from LED to graphene deposition. For the OLED market, Aixtron is offering Organic Vapor Phase Deposition (OVPD) equipment (which was exclusively licensed to AIXTRON by Universal Display).

Juergen Kreis, AIXTRON's Director Business Development, was kind enough to update us on Aixtron's OLED business and answer a few questions we had on the company's technology. Juergen joined AIXTRON in 2010 as Director Business Development with special focus on the portfolio for organic material deposition solutions.

Q: Hello Juergen. Can you give us a short introduction to AIXTRON's OLED related products and services?

AIXTRON’s core expertise clearly is in the offering of proprietary process solutions for the deposition of organic thin-films, with OVPD (Organic Vapor Phase Deposition) and PVPD (Polymer Vapor Phase Deposition) being the core process technologies. As the fabrication of organic electronics requires many manufacturing steps, flawless integration of the respective processes into an automated material flow is essential.

Samsung is still on the side lines regarding OLED TVs, and reportedly the company is aiming to produce quantum-dot enhanced LCDs soon. One of the problem with QDs is that they include Cadmium, and now the Korea Times says that Samsung is collaborating with Dow Chemical to develop cadmium-free displays.

According to the report, Samsung Electronics aims to introduce the first cadmium-free QD TV in 2015. Dow chemical already started to produce the cadmium-free QD materials in its Korean's plant.

Samsung Display introduced three new special displays modes enabled by AMOLED technology - an ultra power-saving mode (already used in some of their smartphones), color weakness mode and super dimming mode. These are great examples how OLED's emissive nature can be used for innovative solutions.

The color weakness mode can help people with color vision deficiency to distinguish red and green clearly - by inceasing (or decreasing) the brightness of the red and green subpixels.

An LCD works by selectively blocking light from a backlighting unit (BLU, usually made from LEDs) using a crystal which changes its polarization-filtering when voltage is applied. An electrochromic device is similar in idea but more simple as they can be turned from being transparent to being opaque. These kind of displays haven't been commercialized successfully yet due to fragile materials and material mismatches with the electrodes.

But new research at Bilkent University shows that graphene can be used to create such a device that features high percentage optical modulation, optical tuning properties in the UV to infrared, good electrical conductivity with no material mismatches. The display is mechanically flexible.

BOE Display announced that it has been awarded a 124 million RMB (about $20 million) subsidy from the local Chinese government at Hefei Xinzhan towards its Gen-8.5 OLED fab in the area. BOE currently has a Gen-8.5 pilot fab in Hefei, and it seems that this report confirms that BOE Display decided to go ahead and build a real mass production Gen-8.5 OLED fab.

BOE's expected total investment in that fab is currently estimated at 6.7 billion RMB - or just over $1 billion. I do not have any information regarding when they expect to start producing panels at that fab. Using their existing pilot line, BOE produced 55" 4K OLED TV samples (you can see one above) - and these were on display at SID 2014.

UK's R&D institute, the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), published a nice video showing how OLED technologies can make aircraft safer, more efficient and more entertaining. We're still a long way before this kind of solutions are available...

In February 2014, Spike Aerospace announced that instead of conventional windows, it will use curved, super-thin digital displays in their upcoming supersonic business jet, the S-512. The S-512 will be available in 2018, and will reportedly cost $80 million. Spike did not mention OLEDs specifically, but it makes sense that OLEDs will be employed for this advanced aircraft.