AU Optronics - Page 7

Taiwan's AU Optronics has been struggling with AMOLED production for years now, but finally the company started mass production of two AMOLED panels: a 1.63" 320x320 panel for wearable devices (smart watches), a 4.3" 480x272 panel and a 4.97" 1280x720 panel. Towards the end of 2014, AUO will also release a 5.46" Full-HD panel.

This is great news for the OLED industry and for everyone who wants to adopt AMOLEDs in their products. Please contact us if you want to find a supplier for these OLEDs.

AUO's president Paul Peng made some interesting comments regarding OLED TVs during AUO's recent quarterly conference call. First of all, Peng says that while AUO "acknowledges" the active OLED TV programs by Samsung and LG, he is still waiting for the market reaction. Peng says that from the customer perspective, OLEDs are getting more and more similar to OLEDs in terms of resolution, color, slim for factor, curve and bezel.

AUO 65-inch AMOLED panel prototype

Peng says that while AUO has been "continuously developing large size OLED TVs", there have no plans for mass production yet. They still regard OLEDs as a solution for high-end customers only, and the company is still "observing the tend".

OLEDNet posted an interesting article saying that Gionee's upcoming GN9005 ultra-slim smartphone uses a 4.8" HD AMOLED Panel (306 PPI) made by AU Optronics. OLEDNet says that the fact that this panel is called "AMOLED" and not "Super AMOLED" like SDC's panels is a hint, and in addition, it is a low-performance panel compared to the SDC-made 5" FHD 441 PPI panel Gionee used in their previous phone (the Elife S5.5).

I'm not sure I'm convinced - this panel could still be made by SDC, even if it does not specifically use the Super AMOLED brand (this is up to Gionee I believe to decide). But OLEDNet says that according to their information, AUO started supplying AMOLED Panels to a Chinese maker last month.

Last week AU Optronics showed several AMOLED prototypes at SID 2014, and now we got some photos of all those displays (thanks Sri!). So first up is the flexible 5" 720p panel. This panel uses a plastic substrate and uses a thin film encapsulation. The minimum bending radius is less than 1 cm.

Next up is a "normal" rigid panel. This one is 5.7" in size with a resolution of 1440x2560 (WQHD). This high-density (517 PPI) features a color gamut of 100% NTSC, a contrast ratio of over 100,000:1, a brightness of 300 cd/m² and a response time of less than 0.01 ms.

Two months ago AUO announced a 1.6" AMOLED for wearable applications. Now at SID Display Week 2014, AUO is showing this new display. The company says that this is the world's first 1.6" in-cell touch AMOLED. The panel is only 0.5 mm thick and is very power efficient.

AUO is also showing a 0.2 mm thick 5" flexible OLED prototype. This panel is made on a plastic substrate and it adopts thin film encapsulation technology - which enable it to reach a minimum bending radius of less than 1 cm.

AU Optronics reported their financial results for Q1 2014 - declining sales due to the traditional slow season, higher revenue and a net profit of 166 million TWD ($5.5 million). Regarding OLEDs, the company updated that it is sampling mobile phone panels and have provided samples to Chinese phones makers.

Even though it was reported that AUO OLED mass production back in October 2013, they are still not actually producing any panels. They now aim to start production in Q2 or Q3 2014, and in any case the capacity is "not so huge".

Merck published an article on OLEDs in their Explorer Magazine, and in that article they reveal that AU Optronics is developing OLED ink-jet technologies with help from Merck.

AUO developed their own inkjet printer (with collaboration with suppliers), and they used it to develop a 14" printable OLED panel. Merck is working closely with AUO to supply them with soluble OLED materials. There's no word yet on how close this technology is for commercialization yet, and Merck did not reveal any details (or even a photo) of the 14" panel.

AUO announced that they developed a new 5.7" WQHD (2560x1440, 513 PPI) AMOLED panel. The panel is ultra slim at 0.57 mm and it uses special driver design to increase touch sensitivity and as a result can support 10 touch points.

AUO says that this is the world's highest resolution AMOLED. Actually we know that Sharp, and SEL developed a 13.3" 8K CAAC-OS OLED that achieves 664 PPI - but this one hasn't been unveiled yet (it will be shown at SID 2014 in a couple of months). In addition Samsung Display announced a while back that they are developing a 5.2" WQHD panel which will have a pixel density of 560 PPI. Reportedly SDC is also planning to make a UHD panel that will have a PPI of 860 (!).

The SID Display Week, the world's leading display industry showcase is scheduled for June, but the organizers already published the list of papers to be presented in this show. Hiding in this long list of technical achievements and research projects are some interesting new OLED developments. So here's some of the achievements to be announced during the show (at no particular order).

TCL's China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) managed to fabricate a 7" QVGA (320x240) flexible PMOLED display. The display uses a thin PEN substrate, processed at Gen-4.5. The company also proposes a design for a 14" QVGA PMOLED panel. CSOT also developed a 31" Full-HD AMOLED panel that uses a IGZO backplane. The 31" direct-emission panel was produced on a Gen-4.5 glass substrate using FMM.

IHS says that demand for OLED materials will rise almost 27% in 2014, to $445 million, up from $350 million in 2013. The market in 2013 grew 49% from 2012.

IHS says that they expect both AUO and Japan Display to start mass producing AMOLED panels in 2014. This means that there will be four major OLED makers in 2014 (AUO, JDI, SDC and LGD) compared to only one in 2012 (SDC). This means that material makers are expected to compete in a more diverse market environment with increased demand and a broader base of customers.