November 2023

Back in April 2022 it was reported that BOE started planning a 8.5-Gen IT AMOLED Line, to target the laptop and tablet markets. Following some delays, the company has now officially announced it plans and is set to start constructing the new fab.

Asus ZenBook 17 Fold OLED (BOE panel)

BOE says that it will invest 63 billion Yuan (over $8.8 billion USD) to build the new fab in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China - where its first B7 6-Gen flexible AMOLED line is located as well. The new fab will use 2290x2620 glass substrates (which is usually referred to as 8.7-Gen) and will have a capacity of 32,000 monthly substrates. The fab will produce flexible and foldable AMOLEDs (on a polyimide substrate).

Universal Display announced that it signed a long-term OLED material supply and license agreements with BOE Technology Group. This is actually an extension of UDC's previous agreement with UDC (which was signed in 2017). UDC did not disclose the financial terms.

BOE recently announced that it shipped over 100 million AMOLED displays in 2023. 

In 2022, Japan Display (JDI) announced that it has developed a "historic breakthrough in display technology" - a new OLED deposition process which they refer to as eLEAP, that is said to be cost effective and can be used to create freeform OLEDs that are brighter, more efficient, and longer lasting compared to OLEDs produced using mask evaporation (FMM).

Japan Display announced an agreement with China-based LCD maker HKC Corp to mass produce panels by 2025 in China, based on JDI's technology, but the plan was later cancelled, and JDI said it will establish its own factory in China. The company now says that it is progressing with its negotiations with the Wuhu Economic and Technological Development Zone (in Anhui Province), and the hope is to reach a final agreement will be reached by the end of the year. Interestingly, JDI also says that it is considering building an eLEAP AMOLED fab in India, but we do not have more details.

RTINGS.com posted an interesting article, detailing the results of their long-term (10-months) longevity tests on several OLED and LCD TVs and monitors. The test is simple - display a CNN feed constantly, and checking what happens. Note that CNN changed their logo a bit a few months into the test, but the team did not make any changes to the test itself.

As is expected, OLED monitors and TVs suffer from image retention problems, and the CNN logo is visible in some of these panels, when showing a gray screen. Some TVs suffer more than others. 

Evaluation services provider SGS has awarded Samsung Display's OLED laptop displays with its SGS Green Mark ECCS, HSA) following completion of a hazardous substance assessment.

SGS tested SDC's laptop OLEDs to precisely verify the presence of, and to quantify the volume of, over 300 hazardous substances of environmental concern which may be harmful to humans and the environment. This includes heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants and others. Samsung Display’s OLED panels performed well, achieving low levels, below the HSA testing threshold.

OLED-Info will soon be launching the new OLED Toolbox, which is now ready for pre-orders, with a special early-bird discount. 

The OLED Toolbox is expected to be released in January 2024. The toolbox will be a must-have information platform for companies in the display industry, and will include five different parts:

• An information guide to OLED technologies, processes, the industry and the market
• Market status and industry roadmaps
• OLED technology, market and industry analysis and insights - written by Ron Mertens based on years of experience in the display industry 
• Structured data (spreadsheets) on OLED production lines, devices with OLED displays, OLED producers, supply chain companies (with contact details) and more
• In-depth articles by multiple industry experts illuminating various processes, materials, devices, analysis, insights and more
• Brochures, presentations, catalogs and other content items contributed by industry players (display makers, supply chain companies, analysts and more)

 Updates on the latest status of the OLED Toolbox project will be given periodically, here's our first status report:

In July 2023, Samsung officially launched the 83" 83S90C, the company's first TV to use LG's WOLED panels, following several years of negotiations and hesitation by the Korean rivals.

It was assumed that Samsung's total orders from LGD will be limited (as the 83-inch are expensive and not highly popular), and according to UBI, the total number of panels that LGD actually shipped to Samsung is only 'several thousands'.

Germany-based Credoxys has successfully completed its second funding round, led by deep-tech VC LIFTT and Melchers Group. The company says it will use the funds to commercialize its p-dopant technology in both the Korean and Chinese markets. The company already validated some product candidates with industry partners, and these are ready for customer qualification.

Credoxys is focused on developing novel materials for both the p- and n-sides of OLEDs and organic solar cells (OPVs). The company says its newly developed p-dopants surpass current standards by exhibiting extremely low absorption of visible light and low pixel cross-talk. The materials enable the doping of hole transport materials with deep HOMO levels, making them particularly suitable for phosphorescent blue OLEDs.

Universal Display is progressing with its blue PHOLED material, and earlier this month the company said it is on track to introduce the new material commercially in 2024. During a company seminar, UBI's Daejeong Yoon updated that according to their latest information, Samsung Display has decided to adopt a blue phosphorescence material in the second half of 2025 - a year later than expected.

Samsung is calling the new material stack B1, and it says that the new stack will increase the efficiency of its OLED device by more than 65% (which seems to be rather too much, maybe it means 65% of the power consumption of the current stack). UBI says that the blue OLED still suffers from low lifetime - the lifetime of the blue PHOLED stack is only 55% of the lifetime of its current fluorescence-blue stack, but regardless of that the company will introduce it commercially due to the power consumption efficiency.

According to reports, Kateeva's QD-OLED printing project saga is not over. Samsung Display tested the company's latest printers, but these failed the tests and Samsung Display will not but these printers. SDC planned to replace the currently-used Semes' printers, which also suffer from low performance.

Samsung Display is also not committed yet to expand its QD-OLED production lines, which means that in any case it does not need to buy new printers for production expansion. Earlier reports suggested that SDC wanted to upgrade it current capability for higher density (to reach 8K TV printing), so this may be the reason behind the testing of Kateeva's new printers.