April 2016

The US Department of Energy (DOE) released a report on its first OLED lighting demonstration (GATEWAY) project. The report summarizes the experience at Aurora Lighting Design, a company based in Grayslake, IL, that installed Acuity Brands' Trilia OLED lighting system in September 2014.

On the plus side, the DOE report says that OLED lighting has a appearance that expresses creativity and innovation, making a statement to Aurora Lighting Design clients who visit the offices. The color quality is high, and the employees enjoy working under the system. The exposed OLED panels deliver a soft, minimal-shadow lighting that makes faces and expressions visible, and increases room brightness by delivering light to vertical surfaces.

Samsung announced that Kwon Oh-hyun, the current head of Samsung Electronics’ device solutions (DS) will be Samsung Display's next CEO. Kwon will be in charge of both Samsung Electronics semiconductor and display businesses.

Samsung Display is seeing its profits shrink as the display market is facing tough times - and in Q1 2016 SDC posted a loss of $237 million. As China (mainly led by BOE) is set to become a leader in LCD, Samsung Display is focusing on OLED displays. According to analysts in Korea, the new appointment may mark the beginning of SDC's entrance to the OLED TV market.

In January 2016 Photonics-based solutions provider Coherent announced large (well in excess of $150 million) orders for its Linebeam systems which are used for laser annealing (turning a-Si into LTPS) for OLED producers. Coherent also said it has a significant number of orders pending for the remainder of 2016.

In the company's latest conference call, Coherent announced that the recent OLED capacity expansions generated more than $300 million of orders for Linebeam 1000, Linebeam 1500, and UV Blade systems in Q2 2016. The UV Blade is used for laser lift-off in flexible OLEDs. These systems will be delivered to end customers in South Korea, Japan and China.

This is a bit old, but I just found out that in September 2015 France-based OLED microdisplays producer MicroOLED announced that it shipped over 150,000 units of its first product family, the 0.38" WVGA MDP01 full-color OLED microdisplay.

The MDP01 is used in digital cameras, video glasses, sport optics and security applications. MicroOLED says that they did not expect it, but the MDP01 is still the lowest power consumption OLED microdisplay with that resolution. The company is still improving the performance of that product family and new versions are being introduced to fit augmented-reality and other applications.

LG Display announced that it plans to invest almost $275 million (310 billion Won) to build a new flexible OLED production line.

This new investment is in addition to the planned E5 6-Gen (1500x1850 mm) flexible OLED fab announced in July 2015. The E5 line will cost $900 million, and will have a capacity of 7,500 monthly substrates - or 1.5 million 5.5" panels. The new fab is scheduled to begin mass production in the first half of 2017.

IHS say that the lower prices of AMOLEDs and the improvements in production is attracting more device makers to adopt AMOLED panels in their products. This leads to rapid increase in AMOLED shipments.

IHS sees 395 million AMOLEDs shipped in 2016 (this seems a bit optimistic) - an increase of 40% compared to 2015. Revenues will increase by 25% to reach $15 billion. AMOLED penetration in smartphone displays will rise from 17% in 2015 to 21% in 2016. IHS says that "AMOLED is becoming the shiniest spot in the flat-panel display industry".

Samsung announced its financial results for Q1 2016 with profit rising 12% (from Q1 2015) to reach 6.68 trillion won (about $3.4 billion USD). The good results (highest profits since Q2 2014) were mostly because of the early and successful launch of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge.

Samsung Display saw its OLED earnings improve - driven by the launch of new high-end products (SDC probably mean its flexible OLEDs) and increase shipments. Samsung says that its OLED shipments "increased by mid-single% QoQ".

As well as the amazing ranges of OLED solutions and innovative ideas showcased at this years’ Light and Building show, visitors could also marvel at a plethora of new OLED design lights. The following pictures show just a smattering of some of the most interesting installation concepts.

LGD Concept of an OLED ceiling lamp

The Fraunhofer FEP developed a new way to micro-pattern (structure) OLED lighting panels using electron beam. The idea is that you create a regular non-patterned OLED and after the encapsulation you use an electron beam that penetrates the encapsulation and changes the luminous characteristics of the organic layers beneath.

Depending on the application, it is even possible to modify individual layers directly. In their demonstration, the researchers showed it is possible to create gray scales in an image.The longer the dwell time on one spot with the beam, the darker the OLED will appear there.

In January 2016 Audi said that the 2016 Audi TT RS coupe, a high-end serially produced car, will use OLED taillights, and the company now finally unveiled the new car - indeed with an OLED taillight.

Audi touts the OLED lights and the 5-cylinder 2.5-liter engine as the main highlights of the TT RS. The new engine, made from aluminium, produces a total of 395 hp and 480 Nm of peak torque. The Audi TT RS Coupé completes the 0-100 km/h sprint in just 3.7 seconds.