Taiwan-based Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) is building a new 6-Gen fab in China, with an investment of about $1.85 billion. Digitimes reports that CPT plans to produce IGZO backplane OLED panels in its second phase.
The first phase production is scheduled to begin at around June 2017 (construction will be completed by the end of 2016 and equipment installation will begin in Jaunary 2017). The first phase will produce a-Si LCDs, with a monthly capacity of 30,000 substrates. Digitimes did not say when is the second phase planned, and what kind of capacity will be allocated to OLED displays.
In 2015 it was reported that CPT aims to start producing flexible AMOLEDs in 2017. CPT is collaborating with ITRI on foldable OLEDs, and is also developing OTFT-based flexible OLEDs with help FlexEnable. Flexenable and CPT demonstrated an OTFT full-color flexible OLED towards the end of 2015.
CPT has an existing pilot 4.5-Gen AMOLED fab (used to produce AMOLEDs in small volume) - and previously it was reported that CPT either convert this line to flexible AMOLED or somehow integrate it with ITRI's 2.5-Gen flexible AMOLED line. But this new 6-Gen fab sounds like a more ambitious plan. It's not clear if the IGZO-based OLEDs are to be flexible or not...
