The UK innovation agency (Innovate UK) has launched a new 30-month project called UltraWELD, which aims to improve airtight bonding in OLED lighting for aerospace and defense applications. The project partners will develop photonic-based processes for highly dissimilar material joining.

Current dissimilar materials joining is mainly done using adhesive bonding - a highly flexible and low cost process, but one that cannot provide truly hermetic bonds, which reduces the performance of the panels and can lead to optical damage.

German TADF developer Cynora presented its latest blue TADF material in May 2018 - with a CIEy of 0.14, EQE of 20% and a lifetime of 20 hours LT97 at 700 nits. Cynora expects to have blue material in the mass production by 2020.

Cynora's Chief Marketing Offer, Dr. Andreas Haldi was kind enough to answer a few questions we had regarding TADF emitters, the differences between next-generation emitter technologies, lifetime, color points and more.

Researchers from the Fraunhofer FEP institute developed a new micro-patterning process using an electron beam to produce OLED microdisplays on silicon substrates. This could enable a new way to produce direct-emission OLED microdisplays, which will be more efficient and bright compared to the current ones that use color filters.

The electron beam patterning is performed after the encapsulation step - the beam goes through the encapsulation layer and can be used to modify the emission of the OLED materials. To create red, green, and blue pixels, an organic layer of the OLED itself is ablated by a thermal electron beam process.

UBI Research estimates that demand for OLED smartphone displays is now on a gradual increase, and by the end of the year it will return to the levels of the end of 2017, fueled by new Apple OLED phones and SDC's intention to decrease its rigid OLED prices to better compete with LCD displays.

Looking further ahead, UBI sees the OLED smartphone market growing from 430 million unit in 2018 to 900 million units in 2022. Foldable OLED shipments will grow from 1 million units in 2019 to 18 million units in 2022 - that's much lower than UBI's forecasts published only two months ago - when it estimated 28 million foldable OLED panel shipments in 2022.

The Nikkei Asian Review says that Samsung's OLED shipments to Apple for its iPhone X dropped to only 6 million panels in Q2 2018 (April-June). In Q1 2018, it was estimated that SDC produced almost 20 million panels for Apple. NAR says that SDC expected to ship around 12-15 million panels to Apple's iPhone X in the quarter, so this is a major disappointment for Samsung.

According to this report, the sale's of Apple's iPhone X has been much lower than expected in the past quarter. Apple, however, will reportedly release two new OLED smartphones in 2018 - and in June 2018 DSSC said that SDC's flexible OLED fabs utilization rates have been recovering, as SDC started to produce panels for Apple's 2018 phones, and Samsung's own flagship phones.

JOLED announced that it will co-develop high-end gaming monitors together with the Japanese "Burning Core" professional e-sport team.

JOLED will develop the OLED monitors and Burning Core players will test the monitors and provide professional opinion so that JOLED can calibrate and perfect the image quality especially for gaming.

In January 2018 Sharp's CEO announced that Sharp aims to begin commercial production of flexible OLED displays for its own smartphones in Q1 2018. A later report from Taiwan suggested that Sharp is converting a third of its 4.5-Gen Taki plant capacity from LCD to OLED. 30,000 out of 90,000 monthly LCD substrates will be converted to 22,000 OLED substrates.

A new report from Japan, citing Sharp's EVP Katsuaki Nomura, claims that OLED mass production at Sharp began in June 2018, and the company will ship its first OLED Aquos smartphone in Q4 2018.

MagnaChip announced its Q2 2018 financial results - with revenues of $199.7 million, exceeding its guidance and an almost 20% increase from Q2 2017. The company reported record OLED display driver revenues of $62.2 million - up 81.3% from Q1 2018 and up 300% from Q2 2017.

MagnaChip now expects that OLED revenues in 2018 will exceed the $161 million it recorded in 2016.

Samsung Electronics reported its results for Q2 2018 - revenues reached $52 billion and operating profit grew to $13.3 billion - the lowest growth since Q1 2017 as the company's smartphone sales is under pressure from Chinese phone makers. SDC reports an improved utilization rates at its rigid OLED fabs, but there was a slow demand for flexible OLEDs.

Looking into the second half of the year, Samsung expects increased shipments of flexible OLEDs, while rigid OLEDs will face stronger competition from LCDs. Samsung reitrates its plans to start producing foldable OLEDs by the end of 2018.

Photonics-based solutions provider Coherent reported its financial results for Q2 2018. Revenues were $482.3 million and a net income of $67 million. Coherent says that demand for OLED displays remains robust, but market growth remains hindered by pricing and availability.

Coherent sees this as a short-term dynamic, and once OLED producers will be able to compete with Samsung, this will change. Coherent says that 2019 will be another slow year, but investments will return in 2020. Coherent estimates that fiscal 2019 (which ends on September 2019) will likely be down 15% to 20% before recovery starts in fiscal 2020.