Panasonic Avionics announced that it shipped its first batch of the latest Astrova 4K OLED inflight entertainment monitors. These monitors will be installed on Icelandair's forthcoming new fleet of leased Airbus A321neo LR aircraft (due in Q4 2024).

Icelandair will install 16" panels in its business class seats and 13" panels in economy. The new Astrova 4K OLED monitors offer HDR10+, high-fidelity multi-channel audio, USC-C 100W fast charging ports, and an external processing unit that can be placed in the seat box for easier installation.

Researchers from the UK's Northumbria, Cambridge, Imperial and Loughborough universities developed a new Hyperfluorescence OLED emitter system based on a new molecular design, which is highly efficient and simple to produce.

The researchers explain, that in Hyperfluorescence  systems, the elimination of the Dexter transfer to terminal emitter triplet states is the key towards OLED efficiency and stability. Current devices rely on high-gap matrices to prevent Dexter transfer, which unfortunately leads to overly complex devices from a fabrication standpoint. The researchers developed a novel molecular design in which ultranarrowband blue emitters are covalently encapsulated by insulating alkylene straps. 

A report from China suggests that TCL CSOT is looking into building a 8.6-Gen AMOLED production line, targeting IT display production. According to the report, TCL will announce its investment plan later in 2024, if it decides to go ahead with the new fab.

The IT display market (targeting laptops, monitors and tablets) is heating up as Apple will start to adopt AMOLED displays in its tablets this year. Apple's market pull is significant and other vendors will likely increase adoption of IT AMOLEDs. 

Towards the end of 2023, Seoul's Metropolitan Government has initiated a new pilot test at Myeong-dong Station that offers an AI-powered translation service for tourists that enables them to communicate with the subway staff through a transparent 55" LG OLED display.

The pilot was successful, and Seoul's Metro expanded the service to 11 stations, throughout Seoul. This is one of the first useful applications of transparent OLED displays, and it is great to see it expanded in Korea. We do not know whether there are any plans to roll out more such displays in Korea.

According to reports, BOE has commercialized a new tandem OLED architecture, that enabled an improvement of 40% in power consumption and a 600% increase in display lifetime. 

As you can see from the teaser poster above, Chinese smartphone maker Honor will release the first phone to adopt the new panel, the Honor Magic 6 Ultimate, next week on March 18th.

Germany-based OLED lighting developer Inuru inaugurated its new OLED lighting panel production line, the "Dragon Factory", in Wildau near Berlin, Germany. This is an important milestone for Inuru, which is focusing on medication packaging and entertainment applications. The production line is now ready, but it will probably take some time to ramp-up and achieve full-scale production.

Inuru produces its OLED lighting panels using an inkjet printing process, which it says educes production costs by around 90% compared to conventional (evaporation-based) processes. 

In 2022, Samsung Display confirmed it is developing OLED microdisplays, and the company has since stepped up its efforts to bring OLED microdisplay to the market. SDC's CEO said that the OLED microdisplay market will 'mature' in 3-4 years, meaning that it is likely that demand for such solutions will drastically increase, and the technology and production will be able to meet this demand.

Samsung itself plans to ensure that it does not fall behind in the race to develop next-gen OLED microdisplays, and will invest and deploy manpower to become a leading supplier. Samsung's $218 million acquisition of US-based eMagin is part of the company's strategy.

Researchers from CEA-Leti and the Université Sorbonne Paris-Nord (USPN) developed a new OLED structure that enabled them to achieve two new world records for OLED-based data communication, a bandwidth of 450 Mhz and a transmission throughput of almost 3GB/sec. This more than doubles the previous OLED record. The researchers say that this proves that OLEDs can play a role in future fast photonic-based data communication, which was limited to in-organic microLED devices up until now.

The researchers developed a new OLED structure, in order to find the best compromise between speed, light performance and device size. The researchers used evaporation to deposit 7 layers of various organic materials while precisely controlling how they fit together and stack. The whole device is only 40 um in size.

Samsung Display announced that is is starting to build its 8.6-Gen AMOLED production line, that will target IT applications (laptops, tablets and monitors). The new A6 line, will be located at Samsung's old L8 LCD line in Asan, that will be converted to AMOLED production. The company held a ceremony today.

Samsung's plan is to install all the major production equipment by the end of 2024, and begin full-scale production in 2026.