Asahi Glass developed an ultra-thin chemically strengthened 0.07 mm flexible glass that has a bending stress of over 1200 MPa - which makes it possible to use this as a cover glass for foldable devices with a curvature radius of 2.5 mm or even lower.

AGC 0.1 mm flexible glass (2011)

To create this glass, AGC developed a new process that achieved 80% higher impact-failure resistance compared to glass with conventional chemical strengthening. AGC will discuss this new glass at SID Displayweek 2018 in May - and will also hopefully demonstrate it.

In April 2017 OLEDWorks announced its roadmap for 2018-2020, stating that it will released 80-100 lm/W flexible panels in 2018. It seems that the company indeed started producing flexible curved OLED panels, even though it did not announce this officially.

Germany-based producer WALO-TL announced it will present two new OLED lighting lamps (the WALOSUMMER and WALOSPRING) - and both use a range of panels made by OLEDWorks, including curved rectangular panels. In addition, OLEDWorks published the following image on its instagram feed, showing an RGB Studio lamp that uses what seems to be the same panels.

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research developed a way to improve the current injection from the positive electrode in OLED panels. To enhance the hole injection the researchers covered the positive electrode with an ultrathin layer of an organic semiconductor as a spacer layer between the electrode and the light-emitting organic semiconductor.

Current flowing from an electrode (left) to the organic material (right) via a thin molecular layer (center)

The researchers say that they did not actually expect that adding an extra layer and eliminating the physical contact between the electrode and the emitting layer actually improves the electrical contact.

Yesterday reports from Korea suggested that pre-orders for the Galaxy S9 in Korea are 30% lower compared to the pre-orders of the Galaxy S8 in 2017. The Korea Herald, however, today says that Samsung believes it will sell more Galaxy S9 phones than it did with the GS8.

The Korea Herald says that Samsung told its suppliers that its target is to sell 43 million GS9 (and GS9 plus) phones in 2018. In 2017, Samsung shipped 41 million GS8 and GS8 plus phones. In 2016, Samsung shipped 48 million GS7 phones, so even if it reaches its target of 43 million GS9 phones, it will still lag behind The GS7.

IHS estimates that Korean OLED makers (Samsung and LGD) will halt their OLED capacity expansion in 2018, but will resume adding capacity in 2019. Meanwhile China-based makers will continue their fast expansion plans in 2018-2020, and total AMOLED production capacity in China will grow from 228,000 sqm in 2016 to 8.3 million sqm in 2020, that's a CAGR of 145%!.

Interestingly IHS sees no real OLED production in Japan at least until 2020.

In May 2017, Google announced that it has partnered with "one of the leading OLED makers" to develop a high-end VR display. Google is now set to demonstrate this display at SID 2018 in May.

The new Google-designed display is a 4.3" 18Mp (1443 PPI, probably around 5500x3000 resolution) VR display featuring a refresh rate of 120 Hz. This will be the highest-density OLED display ever (not counting OLED-on-silicon microdisplays). Current VR AMOLEDs in production reach only about 600 PPI.

According to reports from Korea, pre-orders for the Galaxy S9 in Korea are 30% lower compared to the pre-orders of Samsung's Galaxy S8 in 2017. Yonhap news says that Korea's three largest carriers distributed only 180,000 GS9 phones, while at the same time last year these three companies distributed 260,00 GS8 phones.

Samsung did not yet disclose any pre-sales data. The GS9 has a flexible 5.8" 1440x2960 (570 PPI) Super AMOLED display (6.2", 529 PPI, on the S9 Plus). DisplayMate says that this display is the best mobile display ever tested, surprassing in quality the 5.8" flexible AMOLED used in the iPhone X.

TCL announced that Guangdong Juhua Printing Display Technology developed a 31" 4K OLED display. According to the report from Korea, Juhua Printing is using 6-Gen substrate which are cut in half for the organic layer ink-jet deposition which is done at 4.5-Gen.

TCL hopes to finalize the inkjet mass-production technology development by 2019, on 11-gen substrate.

In October 2017 BOE started to produce flexible OLED displays at its first flexible OLED line, the Chengdu B7 6-Gen fab. In addition to this fab in Chengdu, in October 2016 BOE announced another 6-Gen OLED fab, in Mianyang, with a similar capacity.

In November 2017 reports from Korea suggested that BOE is planning its third flexible OLED Line, as the Chinese company aims to ramp up production quickly and be able to supply flexible OLEDs to Apple in the future. Today BOE officially announced its plans to construct its third line in Chongqing's Liangjiang New District. BOE's new fab will cost 46.5 billion Yuan, or about $7.3 billion USD.

The following is a sponsored post by IDTechEx

An estimated 2,500 people will attend Printed Electronics Europe, part of the world’s largest series of events on printed, flexible and hybrid electronics, which will be held on 11-12 April at the Estrel Convention Center in Berlin.

The unique focus of the event is to speed up the adoption of printed electronics by bringing together end users with suppliers across the value chain. Presentations from end users will cover their progress and use cases involving the technology, with speakers from a variety of global organizations representing different industry verticals including Beko, Johnson & Johnson, Cartamundi, Saati, Panasonic, Huawei, GE Healthcare and many more.