December 2021

The Looking Glass Factory develops interfaces for holographic, light field displays. Light field displays seem to be advancing, and we invited LGF's CEO and co-founder, Shawn Frayne, to help us understand the technology and to tell us more about the company, its technologies and latest status.

Q: Hello Shawn. Can you give us a short background on LGF, and on your own interest in light field displays?

Ever since I saw the holographic shark swallow up Marty McFly in Back to the Future II, I have been pursuing the dream of the hologram a way to create and share images and memories that are as lifelike as people and things in the real world. However, despite living in a 3D universe, our digital interactions, memories and creations remain trapped on flat, 2D screens. I wanted to change that, and that’s how and why Looking Glass Factory started.

LG Display unveiled its latest OLED TV technology, branded as OLED EX. LG says that these WOLED panels combine new deuterium compounds and personalized algorithms to improve the image quality and increase brightness by up to 30%. EX is an acronym of Evolution and eXperience.

LG Display says that it has "successfully converted the hydrogen elements present in organic light emitting elements into stable deuterium". LGD extracts the deuterium compounds from water, and after stabilization, the compounds allow the OLED devices to be brighter - and also last longer.

2021 is soon over - another pandemic-driven year, where we experienced new COVID breakouts, a massive IC shortage and a strong resilience and innovation in the OLED industry.

Here are the top 10 stories posted on OLED-Info in 2021, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

1. LG's 27" OLED monitor, the 27EP950, to cost $2,999 (Feb 7)
2. LGD: higher efficiency WOLED stack, to start producing 42- and 83-inch panels (Jan 11)
3. OLED vs MicroLED - a technology comparison (Jul 28)
4. JOLED supplies its printed OLEDs for LG's upcoming 31.5-inch 4K monitor (Jan 14)
5. LG to ship the OLED C1 OLED TVs towards the end of April 2021 (Mar 20)
6. Here come Samsung polarizer-free POL-LESS OLEDs (Mar 30)
7. SDC to introduce more than 10 new AMOLED displays for laptops in 2021 (Jan 3)
8. Is Facebook planning to use eMagin's dPd OLED microdisplays? (Aug 17)
9. DSCC sees OLED microdisplays shipments rising to over 19 million in 2026 (Apr 20)
10. AUO shows a dual-sided rollable OLED and a 32" inkjet printed panel (May 20)

According to reports from China, Visionox has finalized its LTPO R&D project and is now starting to produce LTPO OLED displays. This will enable the company to compete with Samsung and other leading OLED producers for the high-end smartphone display segment.

Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide, or LTPO, is an OLED display backplane technology developed by Apple. LTPO combines both LTPS TFTs and Oxide TFTs (IGZO, Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) to enable variable refresh rate displays, and power savings of up to 15%. LTPO AMOLED displays are widely used today in high-end smartphones and other mobile devices.

LG Display will introduce new transparent OLED application ideas at CES 2022. The company is unveiling four innovate solutions, all that use the same 55" FHD 38% transparent OLED panel that LG is producing since 2019.

First up is the Shopping Managing Showcase which uses a wooden display stand. This retail application is "ideal for luxurious department stores as it can "display eye-catching visual content on the screen that harmonizes with the products on display behind".

LG Display announced that its automotive OLED displays have been recognized as "high visibility displays" by by leading global independent inspection service TÜV Rheinland of Germany.

LG says that its automotive OLED panels consistently offer the best image quality in a wide range of environments. Thanks to the high brightness (10 to 5000 nits) of its displays, these OLEDs can perform well during both day and night, and work at a wide range of temperatures, even minus 40 degrees Celsius.

OLEDON says that it has developed a new curved plane-source evaporation shadow mask process that can be used for OLED microdisplay fabrication, with a potential density of 10,000 PPI (minimum shadow distance of 0.18um). Using this technology it will be possible to create direct-emission microdisplays.

In the video above, you can see the lecture OLEDON's CEO gave last month at iMID 2021, that explains the new technology.

Back in April 2021 we reported that Samsung Electronics is in talks with LG Display regarding the supply of OLED TV panels. Back then it was estimated that Samsung will release its first OLED TVs before the end of 2021.

This did not happen, but recent reports from Korea suggest that the two companies will likely sign a supply agreement soon. Samsung aims to order around 1.5 million OLED TV panels in 2022 from LGD. This will enable the company to ship around 2 million OLED TVs in 2022 (as it hopes to buy 500,000 QD-OLED panels from SDC).

LG Display will be demonstrating two new "lifestyle" applications for its OLED TVs at CES 2022. Both these concept project use flexible OLED TV screens.

First one is the Media Chair, which is a modern relaxation device that combines a comfortable recliner with a 55" curved (1,500R) OLED TV and LG's Cinematic Sound OLED (CSO) technology.

This is a guest article by Assaf Levy-Be'eri, co-founder at JOYA Team, an optical technologies house offering development services for optical systems with an expertise in AR and VR.

The Augmented Reality (AR) systems field has recently expanded to many different applications and markets. With all the buzz around Metaverse, there is an understanding that AR systems will become the bridge between the real world and the virtual world and will allow the user to combine these worlds.

However, the road to a sustainable, affordable AR system that is user-friendly and that provides real-life experience is still a long one.