Last week Innolux demonstrated new rigid and flexible AMOLED prototypes, and the company says it aims to mass produce AMOLEDs. The company's VP Jeffrey Yang says that the company will be able to ship its first AMOLEDs in 2017, and these will be small displays for wearable devices. The company aims to ship automotive OLEDs starting in 2020.

Innolux's CEO says that Taiwanese companies find it hard to compete with Korean and Chinese display makers because the government of Taiwan does not provide enough financial support. Some reports say that Innolux aims to integrate Innolux's and Sharp's OLED units.

Two months ago Taiwan's ITRI institute demonstrated a foldable AMOLED display - which fold both inwardly and outwardly. Last week at Touch Taiwan, ITRI demonstrated a rollable AMOLED:

In addition to the foldable OLED, ITRI showed 36 different flexible display technologies - including new materials, substrates and patterning equipment.

AU Optronics demonstrated a new foldable touch-enabled AMOLED last week at Touch Taiwan 2016. This impressive display won the gold-panel award for 2016.

The display is 5" 1280x720 (295 PPI), and is only 0.1 mm with the in-cell touch layer. AUO says the panel withstands over a million folding cycles at a folding radius of 4 mm. The color gamut is 100% NTSC.

Following Foxconn's $3.5 billion Sharp Takeover, it was reported that Foxconn aims to invest a total of $1.8 billion in OLED technologies, as Foxconn aims to become an OLED supplier to Apple. In June 2016 Foxconn's president said that the company aims to start mass producing OLEDs as early as 2017.

As we estimated, this was overly optimistic, and it is now reported that Sharp is considering to revise its OLED investment plan, and produce those OLEDs in a Saki Display Product fab in Osaka and not in Sharp's fab in Kameyama. This move will delay production, and Sharp will not be able to start producing OLEDs even in 2018.

Taiwan-based Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) is building a new 6-Gen fab in China, with an investment of about $1.85 billion. Digitimes reports that CPT plans to produce IGZO backplane OLED panels in its second phase.

The first phase production is scheduled to begin at around June 2017 (construction will be completed by the end of 2016 and equipment installation will begin in Jaunary 2017). The first phase will produce a-Si LCDs, with a monthly capacity of 30,000 substrates. Digitimes did not say when is the second phase planned, and what kind of capacity will be allocated to OLED displays.

The Fraunhofer Institute is working on alternative light sources for photo therapy, and Flexible OLED technology is prime candidate because it is light weight, can be flexed and does not produce almost any heat (unlike LED-based lighting).

Before flexible OLEDs are actually used in such treatment, though, it is important to know if OLEDs carry any potential toxic risks. The Fraunhofer FEP performed an initial study on in vitro cell cultures afflicted by defined damage. The researchers used flexible 10x10 cm green OLEDs, and found that the OLEDs positively stimulated the damaged cells, as expected. The tests showed now cytotoxity in the material systems, including when the OLEDs were bent (this increases the chance of material leakage from the OLEDs).

LG hosted an OLED TV event in Israel together with the Israeli HomeTheater.co.il site. During the event, LG's Israeli executive said that the company aims to increase the OLED market share in the 55" TV category to 17% in 2016 (in terms of revenues, not shipments). The market share in 2015 was only 1.4%.

This is a very ambitious target indeed, but LG says that they already see more and more people buying OLED TVs in Israel, OLED TVs are displayed in retail stores all over in Israel and people are asking about OLEDs and are starting to become familiar with the new technology. The 55" FHD OLED TVs are no longer considered "hi-end" by LG's Israeli marketing team, which is an interesting comment. You can see the full video below (in Hebrew):

Last week Wisechip announced that it will demonstrate its new flexible and transparent PMOLED panels. Wisechip achieved a breakthrough in transparent OLED production, and mass production will begin by the end of 2016.

Above you can see Wisechip's new prototype. It is a round 1.07" PMOLED that features a resolution of 160x136. We do not have any more technical details, but Wisechip says it achieves "good transparency".

Researchers from Japan's Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) developed a new OLED device architecture that enables efficient, long-lasting and low-drive voltage OLEDs, at practical brightness levels.

The researchers call the new device architecture exciplex-triplet energy transfer, or ExTET. The image above shows the elementary process and its energy state diagram. To create the emissive layer of the ExTET, the researcher took a film with an electron-transporting material (ETM) and a hole-transporting material (HTM) and doped it with a phosphorescent dopant. Direct recombination between the electrons at the LUMO level and the hole at the HUMO level forms a charge-transfer excited complex (exciplex) - and the phosphorescent emission occurs via energy transfer from the exciplex to the dopant.

Earlier this month we reported that Samsung Display cannot supply enough AMOLED displays to Chinese phone maker Oppo, as SDC's production capacity is fully booked, and Oppo is seeing higher demand than anticipated. In fact some reports say that Oppo is selling more phones in China than Apple.

Now Oppo confirms this shortage of AMOLED display panels for the R9, and the company's president announced that Oppo will release an LCD variant called R9km. The LCD in the R9km will be supplied by JDI. The Oppo R9 (also known as F1 Plus) has a large display (5.5" FHD, 401 PPI) and is now available for around $500 in the US, unlocked.