Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) demonstrated two new OLED display prototypes, both based on the company's proprietary CAAC-IGZO (c-axis aligned crystalline In-Ga-Zn-O) backplane material.

First up is the world's smallest 8K display, a 8.3" OLED (1058 PPI) with a resolution of 7680x4320. The panel is based on a white OLED with color filter architecture.

In July 2017, LG Display announced that it decided to build a 8.5-Gen (2200x2500) OLED TV production line in Guangzhou. Following many delays, LGD got the approval for its new OLED TV fab from both the Korean and Chinese governments only in July 2018.

Korea ETNews now reports that LG Display started to install the production equipment in the Guangzhou fab. LG Display's new fab will have a capacity of 90,000 monthly 8.5-Gen substrates (2200x2500 mm), using two production lines. The equipment in the first line (with a capacity of 60,000 monthly substrates) was already installed, and LGD will soon (H1 2019) start ordering and installing the equipment in the second line as well.

DSCC estimates that the AMOLED market will grow 19% in 2019 to reach $31 billion, up from $26.5 billion in 2018. OLED revenues will continue to grow and reach $48.8 billion in 2022 (a CAGR of 16%).

Looking at OLED unit shipments and area production, 2019 will see a 22% growth in unit shipments to 610 million panels and a 35% growth in area to 9 million square meters. Area shipments will grow faster than revenues as OLED selling prices will continue to decline - and as OLED TVs take up a larger share of the OLED market.

According to Korean publication ETNews, Samsung is aiming to supply Apple with its latest Y-OCTA OLED panels for Apple's 2019 iPhones. Y-OCTA (or Youm On-Cell Touch AMOLED) is Samsung's term for its on-cell touch flexible AMOLED technology.

Y-OCTA panels are thinner than Samsung's previous flexible Add-On Touch panels as the touch sensor is deposited directly on the encapsulation (TFE) layer. The optical features are also better as the touch layer is below the polarizer and enables the use of a non-ITO grid, there's no need for a support film (see image above) and the number of layers is lower.

According to reports from China, last week BOE started to construct its 3rd 6-Gen flexible AMOLED production line in Chongqing's Liangjiang district (the B12 line). The investment in the new fab will total 46.5 billion Yuan, or about $7.3 billion USD.

The B12 line will have a capacity of 48,000 monthly substrates - which will bring BOE's total flexible OLED capacity to 144,000 monthly substrates (second only to Samsung).

DSCC says that Q3 2018 was a record quarter for display equipment spending, as sales reached $7.8 billion billion in the quarter - up 13% from Q3 2017. In the quarter five new 6-Gen OLED lines were installed in addition to a 10.5-Gen LCD fab.The top 5 equipment vendors, according to DSCC, were Canon (13.1%), Applied materials (9.6%), Tokyo Electron, Nikon and SFA Engineering.

Despite the record quarter, total display spending will fall 9% in 2018 (to $21.6 billion). OLED equipment spending is expected to drop 44% in 2019 to $7 billion as mobile OLED spending slows. DSCC says that OLED spending will rebound in 2020, and will increase by 50% to reach $10.5 billion. In 2021, DSCC sees OLED spending declining again, and then rebound in 2022.

According to ETNews, Samsung Display has made significant progress with its OLED ink-jet printing process technology, and the company now aims to apply this technology to produce medium-sized panels for OLED laptops and OLED monitors. Samsung may also use this process to produce smaller tablet displays.

It seems that Samsung is aiming to settle on three main next-generation OLED technologies - evaporation (FMM) OLEDs for small-sized display, ink-jet OLED deposition for medium-sized panels and hybrid QD-OLEDs for large-area OLED TV panels. It's other display technologies are QD-LEDs for TVs and Micro-LEDs for next-generation small and large area displays.

Japan-based printed OLED developer JOLED demonstrated several new OLED displays at Finetech Japan last week. We already posted on these new OLEDs, and now we have photos of the new panels.

So first up is JOLED's first OLED TV panel. The 55" 4K (3840x2160, 80 PPI) panel offers a 120Hz refresh rate and a color gamut of 100% DCI (135% sRGB) and is printed on JOLED's Transparent Amorphous Oxide Semiconductor (TAOS) backplane.

Solomon Systech launched a TDDI (Touch and Display Driver Integration) IC for PMOLED displays. The new SSD7317 (the world's first PMOLED TDDI IC) integrates touch and display microelectronics in a single chip and can enable thinner and lighter form factors and reduced manufacturing time and process - and higher display quality (higher light transmission) and touch performance.

Solomon explains that the SSD7317 adopts a proprietary time multiplexing approach for display driving and in-cell touch detection, thereby enabling touch detection on traditional PMOLED display module with no modifications needed on the existing display module structure. Unlike traditional out-cell touch solutions (with separate display and touch IC) which need a dedicated ITO layer for touch sensor, the SSD7317 eliminates the touch ITO and PET substrate layers in addition to the bottom Optically Clear Adhesive (OCA).

Excessive exposure to blue light has been linked to many health issues (including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and insomnia). Researchers from Taiwan's National Tsing-Hua University, led by Prof. J.H. Jou, have been advocates of candle-light OLED lighting for a long time, as part of their fight against the hazards of LEDs and white light. We recently posted on Prof. Jou's latest research on smartphone display risks and the benefits of OLED displays.

In 2015, Taiwan's PMOLED maker WiseChip Semiconductors licensed National Tsing-Hua University's blue-light free OLED lighting technology (called Candlelight OLEDs), with an aim to mass produce these OLEDs by the end of 2017. That project faced delays, however and now NTHU announced that following a collaboration with China's OLED lighting maker First-o-lite it is now ready to commercialize its technology and NTHU demonstrated the first device to use these new panels - the OLED lighting desk-lamp you can see in the video above (and photo below).