In March 2014 Konica Minolta announced that it is starting to construct a R2R flexible OLED lighting fab with plans to start production in the fall of 2014. The company now updates that the equipment is now running, and first panel samples are being produced. KM still aims to start shipping commercial products in the fall.
Konica invested ¥10 billion (almost $100 million) in the new fab, which will have a monthly capacity of a million panels. This will represent a breakthrough in OLED lighting capacity.
KM's fab will produce both white and color-tunable flexible panels. The white panel will 150x60 mm in size (0.35 mm thick) and will weight 5 grams. The color-tunable will be smaller (50x30 mm, 0.29 mm thick, 0.6 grams). Both panels will be flexible with a curvature radius of 10 mm.
Konica Minolta recently broke the world's OLED efficiency record with a 139 LM/W panel. The first panels out of KM's new factory will probably not be so highly efficient, but hopefully they will be close. Commercial OLED lighting efficiency is increasing steadily, and LG Chem plans to start producing 100 lm/W panels by the end of the year.
