Merck

Merck KGaA is a pioneer in high performance OLED material development, supplying a range of materials for AMOLED makers since the industry’s inception.

To learn more about Merck’s materials and views on the OLED industry, we conducted an interview with Dr. Georg Bernatz, Merck Electronics’ Global Head of OLED Technical Marketing. Georg Bernatz has received a PhD in Physics from the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany in 2000. In 2004, Georg joined Merck, where, over the years, he worked in various functions and on various topics in the field of Liquid Crystals for displays. In 2018, Georg changed to OLED, leading OLED Physics Product Research, and in 2020 he became responsible for all Physics & Application Labs in Darmstadt for Display materials. Since October 2023, Georg is heading Merck’s Global Technical Marketing for OLED materials.

Hello Dr. Bernatz. Can you bring us up to date quickly on Merck's current OLED material products? What do you offer to OLED display makers?

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is very active in the design, development and production of a broad variety of high performing OLED materials, with a strong focus on hole and electron transport materials (HTM, ETM), host materials for phosphorescent emitters as well as activities in the field of high efficiency blue.

Germany-based beeOLED announced that it has raised $14.4 million in its Series A funding round, co-led eCAPITAL and Innovation Industries. Other investors include KBC Focus Fund and the company's existing investors M Ventures (the corporate venture capital arm of Merck), HTGF, TGFS, and JBN-Invest.

beeOLED was established in 2020 with an aim to develop deep-blue OLED emitters. The company's material technology is based on intra-metallic emission, that has been used in other display technologies in the past but have not been usable in OLED displays yet. beeOLED said that it is the first to make intra-metallic molecules compatible with the vacuum processing technology used in high-volume OLED display manufacturing.

beeOLED's CEO, Dr. Jan Blochwitz-Nimoth has 20+ years experience in managing deep tech teams and companies, and is the founder and CTO of Novaled. Dr. Jan was kind enough to answer a few question we had regarding beeOLED, its technology and business.

Merck introduces new OLED encapsulation materials that the company says offer superior flexibility, higher reliability, and longer lifetime for flexible devices compared to existing solutions. 

Merck says that its new low-temperature ALD silicon materials offer highly improved barrier characteristics - 100 times more effective than current solutions. And they can be deposited in thin layers - 20 times thinner than existing solutions. Merck introduced low-temperature ALD silicon materials in 2022 for automotive OLED, and the company expects that the new materials will be used for the encapsulation of flexible IT OLED displays (laptops, tablets and monitors).

Universal Display Corporation announced that it has acquired Merck's Phosphorescent OLED Emitter Intellectual Property (IP) assets. This portfolio includes over 550 issued and pending patents around 172 patent families with an average lifetime of 10 years, and represents over 15 years of R&D. 

The two companies also entered into a multi-year collaboration agreement, in which the two companies will create advanced PHOLED stacks based on UDC's OLED green and yellow emitters and Merck's transport and host materials.

This is a sponsored post by Merck

Merck inaugurated its first OLED production site in China, that has now begun operations, and it joins Merck's China-based production of liquid crystals and photoresist materials.

Merck's local OLED production will give Merck's China-based and Asia-based customers easier and faster access to OLED materials and a stable and more flexible supply chain.

DSCC updated its OLED material market data, and it now sees AMOLED stack material revenues growing at a 18% from 2020 ($1.07 billion) to 2026 ($2.9 billion). If UDC actually manages to release a commercial blue PHOLED, the market could even exceed $3 billion.

The majority of OLED material revenues from from TV applications, but the market share of mobile devices is expected to grow and reach almost 50% by 2026.

Merck announced that it has completed its OLED manufacturing capacity expansion project at its Poseung site in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea. Merck invested around 20 million Euros to install sublimation equipment and an OLED vacuum deposition unit.

From the left, Jung Do Young, Director General for Economic Planning of Gyeonggi-do, WooKyu Kim, Managing Director of Merck Korea, Choi Won Yong, Deputy Mayor of Pyeongtaek City

Merck began to lay the foundation for R&D, production and the stable supply of OLED materials to Korean panel makers in 2005, as part of its successful strategy of achieving success through domestic research and production. The company continuously interacts with OLED researchers from Korean panel companies so that Korea can continue to lead the OLED industry, and Merck develops materials for OLED TV and flexible, rollable and foldable OLED displays together with its customers.

DSCC updated its AMOLED material market forecast, saying that the market will reach $1.4 billion in 2021 (up 32% from 2020), and grow at a 16% CAGR from 2019 ($927 million) to 2025, to reach $2.18 billion by 2025.

DSCC takes a look into the material cost for LG Display's WOLED TV panels. LGD will likely manage to implement incremental improvements in material utilization and price, which will enable the company to almost halve the material cost of its TV panels- from $88.14 per sqm in 2019 to $47.19 per sqm by 2025.

Towards the end of 2020, Merck announced that it is expanding its OLED material production site in Korea. The company today announced that HTM production commenced at the site.

Merck is already supplying HTM (Hole Transport Materials) to LGD, to be used in large OLED TV production. Merck is now starting to supply HTM materials for LGD's mobile p-OLED displays as well.

Korea-based OLED materials maker Solus Advanced Materials (previously Doosan Solus) announced that the company will start supplying HTL materials for LG Display, for its E3 line in Paju, used to produce OLED TVs.

According to reports from Korea, up until now Merck was LGD's sole HTL supplier (for large-area WOLED production), and Solus will now replace some of the HTL materials previously supplied by Merck. Solus hopes to expand shipments to LGD and supply HTL materials for LGD's other large-area WOLED fabs.