Kateeva - Page 3

OLED ink-jet developer Kateeva announced that it expanded its headquarters in silicon valley - in fact it doubled its manufacturing space in order to meet the demand for its inkjet systems.

Kateeva leased a new building adjacent to its HQ adding 75,000 sq. ft - mostly for manufacturing and business operations. Kateeva's current headcount has reached 330 people as orders for its YieldJet systems soared.

According to ETNews, LG Display is aiming to start pilot production of ink-jet printed large-area OLEDs during the first half of 2017. This is just an initial step, and it may take one or two years to achieve mass production following the launch of the pilot line.

LG Display's pilot line will be an 8-Gen line and the company hopes that the new production technology will be more efficient than vacuum deposition - and will also enable LGD to produce "direct emission" RGB OLED TVs - which will offer lower-cost production, higher quality and more efficient displays and less components (no need for color filters).

OLED ink-jet developer Kateeva started to offer ink-jet based encapsulation systems in 2014, used to protect flexible OLED panels. Kateeva's encapsulation performance is excellent and it was already reported that these systems are used in flexible OLED mass production - and today Kateeva announced that it takes a "commanding lead" in the OLED thin-film encapsulation (TEF) market.

Kateeva further says that it secured the "vast majority" of available TFE orders, and its customers include the world's largest flat-panel display makers in three key Asia regions - which probably includes Korea and China - and the third region is either Taiwan or Japan.

OLED Ink-Jet developer Kateeva presented at an industry conference in Korea, and the company's Korean branch VP states that the company will supply OLED TV deposition system prototypes later this year to customers in Korea, China and Japan.

Even more interesting is his statement that commercial mass production printers will be deployed in Samsung Display's OLED production lines in two years. Usually Kateeva refrains from discussing customers like that. This will enable Samsung to produce OLED TVs cost effectively - and compete with LG Display on this market.

Kateeva recently announced a large $88 million Series-E funding round, and the ink-jet equipment maker today announced that Ink-Jet guru Eli Vronsky has been promoted to the company's Chief Product Officer.

During our recent visit to San Francisco, we caught up with Kateeva’s executive team on a break from their presentations on inkjet printing for flexible OLEDs. Chief Product Officer Eli Vronsky gave us an update, as well as an overview of the company’s product strategy.

Kateeva announced that it has closed its Series-E funding round - with $88 million in new financing. The new investors (all from China) include BOE Display, TCL Capital. Kateeva raised over $200 million in total, and previous investors include Samsung Ventures and Veeco.

Kateeva is developing and producing ink-jet systems for OLED production. Originally the systems were intended for OLED stack material deposition, but in 2014 the company also started to offer ink-jet based encapsulation systems - used to protect flexible OLED displays.

Samsung Display recently confirmed that it is still developing large-sized OLED panels, and a couple of weeks ago it was reported that Samsung is discussing a large investment (around $3 billion US) into a new OLED TV panel fab.

New reports from Korea gives more details about Samsung's OLED TV plans. Samsung is actually considering a slightly larger investment - around $3.3 billion in a new fab, with an aim to enable Samsung Electronics to launch OLED TVs by 2018. Samsung is looking to build a Gen-8 (2200x2500 mm, or six 55" panels) fab - and will need to start ordering equipment soon. The new fab will enable Samsung to produce about 495,000 square meters in 2017 (7,500 monthly substrates) and over 2 million square meters in 2018.

During the OLED World Summit, an analyst from UBI gave an interesting presentation, showing the company's view of the current status of the OLED TV industry, and their OLED market forecasts for upcoming years.

So first of all, we have LG and Samsung. LGD has obviously been successful in launching WOLED OLED TVs, and scaling up to mass production has been achieved. LG is also hopeful that solution processing will enable them to produce RGB-structured OLEDs efficiently. LG is collaborating with Merck and Espon on printing technologies.

Kateeva and DuPont announced that they will co-develop solutions for ink-jet printed OLEDs - specifically they will optimize DuPont's soluble materials for Kateeva's inkjet systems. The two companies hope this collaboration will enable then to offer a simple and highly-effective OLED TV printing process.

This follows Kateeva's agreement with Sumiomo Chemical that aims to pair Sumitomo's PLED materials to Kateeva's YieldJet OLED ink-jet printing platform.

Kateeva and Sumiomo Chemical announced a non-exclusive key partnership to pair Sumitomo's PLED materials to Kateeva's YieldJet OLED ink-jet printing platform. The two companies hope this collaboration will lead to adoption of P-OLED inkjet printing by OLED TV makers.

Kateeva and Sumitomo will cooperate to co-develop high-quality reference data for customers, which will be optmized to Kateeva's platform and Sumitomo's inks.