China-based Eternal Material Technology (EMT) announced that it has started to construct its 15-tons OLED material production facility in Hefei. Yesterday the company held a groundbreaking ceremony at the construction site. EMT company expects the plant to begin mass producing materials in the second half of 2021. The planned total investment of the project (which will also include production of other materials) is 500 million yuan (or around $72 million USD).

EMT says that it has been able to achieve design wins for its ETL materials, and also other OLED related materials - and has already achieved sales of over 230 million Yuan ($33 million USD). EMT offers over 20 different OLED materials.

In early 2019, LG Display started producing 55 transparent OLED TV panels, and these are slowly entering the market - in commercial displays, transportation displays, and perhaps even the consumer market - with Xiaomi’s first consumer transparent OLED TV (although at over $7,000 for a 55 display, it is not really priced at consumer level - and its usability is also not clear).

An OLED display is an emissive display, and some of our readers asked us - how is it possible for a transparent OLED TV to show a black color? Is the image above, released by Xiaomi, a fake?

According to reports from Korea, LG Electronics is seeing high demand for its 48-inch 4K CX OLED TVs - likely thanks to a high demand for stay-at-home entertainment during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

LG introduced the 48-inch OLED TV model in Korea towards the end of July, and pre-orders sold out "in one minute". In some countries in Europe, the model has gone out of stock in just one week after the launch. Apparently there's high demand from gamers who are looking for a high-quality mid-size gaming monitors. In the US, the 48-inch OLED CX is priced at $1,500 - and it out of stock at Amazon.com.

LG Display announced that it has supplied transparent 55" OLED panels that are installed on subway train windows, in Beijing (Line 6) and Shenzhen (Line 10).

The transparent OLEDs are used to show news, transit maps or other bits of information. LG says that it will aim to supply similar solutions to other subway networks around the world. LG did not detail how many such OLEDs were installed at subway trains in China.

Researchers from North Carolina State University developed a new technique that could drastically lower the cost of ultrasound acoustic imaging, using OLED displays. The researchers say that ultrasound receivers could be made with costs of around $100 - compared to current systems which cost $100,000 or more.

The researchers fabricated an OLED on top of a piezoelectric transducer. When ultrasonic waves interact with the transducer, it lights up the OLED display. This create a very simple ultrasound device compared to current devices.

Foldable OLED display have been introduced in 2019, and today we have several premium smartphones that feature such interesting new displays. Most analysts agree that the foldable OLED market will grow at a very fast rate in the future.

Rollable OLED displays, however, are yet to enter the market. Display makers have been showing rollable display prototypes for many years, but commercial products aren't here yet. LG Display will hopefully start shipping the rollable 65RX OLED TV soon, and the company also says it will ship a rollable OLED smartphone in 2021.

Samsung recently announced the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra smartphone, with a 6.9-inch 1440x3088 Dynamic AMOLED with an LTPO backplane. The display supports a refresh rate of 120Hz at Full-HD resolution and 60Hz at QHD. The Galaxy Note family will ship on August 21 2020.

The display measurements experts at DisplayMate tested a Note 20 Ultra phone, and reports that Samsung again improved its OLED display performance (it "raises the bar significantly higher", in fact) and this high performance display will be the competitive baseline for all upcoming smartphone displays.

OLED microdisplay maker eMagin announced reported its financial results for Q2 2020. Revenues reached $7.7 million, an increase of 44% from Q2 2019. Operating loss was $1.3 million (down from $2.8 million in Q2 2019).

eMagin says it continues to see strong demand for its microdisplays in the military market, and also in the medical market. At the end of the quarter eMagin's backlog was $13.3 million of products to be shipped in the next 12 months. Cash and equivalents at the end of the quarter were $11.5 million.

The display industry's top conference, SID DisplayWeek 2020 took place last week - and for the first time ever it was a virtual event. It turned out to be a successful event, according to SID, which is great news. Here's a list of all our articles (including microLED-Info coverage) from SID this year:

• BOE unveils automotive OLED tail light solution
• BOE details its 12.3 rollable OLED prototype
• BOE unveils a 13.6" FHD QD-OLED display prototype
• BOE details its 55" 8K inkjet-printed OLED TV prototype
• BOE demonstrates new OLEDs for monitors and laptops
• OLET developer Mattrix Technologies announces a $1.5 million investment
• SEL developed a flexible OLED with embedded photo detectors between the OLED pixels
• Visionox demonstrates its latest OLED technologies
• Samsung Display developed a 18.2" 350 nits ink-jet printed OLED panel
• Kyulux updates on its latest Hyperfluorescence TADF emitter performance
• Kopin developed a 7,000 nits color OLED microdisplay
• Notion Systems sells several systems for mura free inkjet printing of future displays
• LG Display showcases a 0.42" 1280x720 OLED microdisplay
• Noctiluca continues to improve its TADF emitter platform
• OLEDWorks introduces a new high-performance multi-stack OLED microdisplay technology
• PlayNitride launches new microLED displays
• RiT Display shows a microLED wearable display prototype
• AUO shows its automotive and flexible microLED displays

During SID Displayweek BOE demonstrated a couple of interesting OLED displays aimed towards monitors and laptops.

The first display you can see in the video is a 49-inch wide (32:9) 3840x1080 240Hz AMOLED gaming monitor display, that features a brightness of 150 nits (500 nits peak) and a 95% DCI-P3 color gamut.