During a trade show, Samsung Display discussed its zero-border, or full-screen OLED technology. Samsung is developing several technologies to enable this kind of display - including 3D bonding, edge brightness control, and an under-the-display camera (Samsung calls its UPC, under-panel-camera). 

Placing the camera under the OLED is a critical part of this solution, and Samsung said that it is developing the technology to enable this - including an increase of 50% in the light transmission of its OLED displays and a new sub-pixel structure that improves the display quality.

LG Display is demonstrating its new 30" and 77" transparent OLED displays for the first time, at the company's booth at K-Display 2023, in Seoul, Korea.

Credit: LG Display

The new 30" transparent OLED offers HD resolution, while the 77" panel offers 4K resolution. All of LG's latest transparent OLED displays offer 45% transparency. LG showed its entire range of T-OLED displays in a coffee shop setting, in partnership with Starbucks.

China-based AMOLED producer Everdisplay (EDO) reported its financial results for the first half of 2023. The company's income was 1.373 billion yuan ($189 million USD), a decrease of 23.4% from the first half of 2022. The company's loss was 1.296 billion yuan ($178 million USD), an increase of 173% from 2022. 

Everdisplay attributes its loss to the global economic recession that results in weak demand for consumer electronics, and also to the overcapacity in the industry which leads to aggressive pricing by OLED makers. In addition to the market conditions, Everdisplay's interest expenses has increased and exchange rate fluctuations results in more losses.

The OLED market is always innovating the technology industry, and the Thin Film group at INFICON is here to help OLED manufacturers grow that innovation. INFICON has developed Magnesium Sensitive OLED and High Precision Sensor Crystals, specifically for the OLED market to preserve the high stability and reproducibility of OLED processes.

The Mg Crystal Advantage

Magnesium Sensitive Crystals fill a significant gap in the manufacturing of OLED displays. Up until now, there was no solution for the difficulties of realizing fast magnesium (Mg) detection. Manufactures had to work around this delay by precoating crystals, an added step that not only adds a substantial amount of time to the process, but also wastes material, which in turn, costs more money and is not sustainable. The revolutionary development of Mg Sensitive OLED Crystals removes these unnecessary, wasteful precoating steps. The difference between current crystal products (green data) and the INFICON Mg Sensitive OLED Crystals (purple data) is substantial is shown below:

In May 2022 we reported that China-based OLED lighting developer Yeolight Technology is starting to build a 4.5-Gen OLED lighting production line, in Huaibei City, Anhui Province, China. The company is now starting to move in and install the first production equipment. The total equipment cost is estimated at 800 million Yuan (about $111 million USD). 

Yeolight says that the new fab, when complete, will have a capacity of around 7 million panels in a year, or 1.2 million automotive lighting modules (probably referring to rear light modules). This will be the world's largest OLED lighting fab, when complete.