OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status - Page 12

In October 2013, Encapsulix announced that a "leading OLED lighting supplier in Europe" placed an order for the M500 ALD deposition system. Today Encapsulix announced that the Gen-2.5 deposition system was shipped.

Encapsulix's system will be used to deposit the encapsulation layer for OLED lighting devices, in applications such as residential, commercial, automotive, and avionics markets. Encapsulix says that their system will feature better barrier properties, device lifetime and cost of ownership than the technology currently in use.

In September 2013, Veeco acquired Synos Technology for $185 million. Synos' FAST-ALD encapsulation technology is aimed towards flexible OLED displays. Back then Veeco said that the company's first FAST-ALD pilot production system has already been installed, and they expect a manufacturing ramp to begin in 2014.

Yesterday Veeco reported their financial results for Q4 2013 (which was a challenging year for Veeco). The company said that they "received a purchase order from the world leader in mobile OLED displays for a first-generation FAST-ALD prototype system". The world's leader in mobile OLEDs is certainly Samsung Display (as they currently hold a market share of over 95%).

The UK's' Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) produced a range of flexible OLED lighting demonstrators. These prototypes were manufactured at CPI's OLED/OPV prototyping line. The CPI made several panels on a range of substrates with thickness ranging from 50µm to 125µm.

Those devices are made from an ITO anode, evaporated hole injection layer, co-evaporated emissive layer and a conventional cathode. The OLEDs are encapsulated using a pressure sensitive adhesive and a commercially available barrier material. The CPI's researchers are investigating a number of methods for device encapsulation and are collaborating with adhesive, getter, and barrier film suppliers.

LG Display posted a very interesting article explaining their flexible OLEDs, and giving some predictions (based on IHS DisplayBank estimates) about the flexible OLED market. A couple of months ago LG already stated that they see a very bright future for flexible OLEDs and they intend to take the lead in this emerging display market.

So first of all, LGD explains the structure of their flexible OLED panel (see below). It is based on a plastic (polyimide) substrate as we already know, and LG gives some more information about their Face Seal method which was discussed before but with very little details.

Germany's tesa, one of the world's leading manufacturers of self-adhesive tapes, launched a new barrier adhesive tape for OLED encapsulation bonding, suitable for flexible panel production.

The new barrier adhesive tapes are transparent transfer barrier tapes that feature the company's DrySeal liner technology (which enables extreme drying of barrier adhesive). This realizes an immediate and direct encapsulation of OLED materials over the full surface without initial degradations caused by water-vapor.

Kateeva is a US based startup that was established in 2009 to develop OLED ink-jet deposition technology originally developed at MIT. The company has been been in stealth-mode for years, and now finally they have unveiled their technology and system, branded YIELDJet.

So YIELDJET is an inkjet printing system that can be used to produce OLEDs in high volume. Kateeva claims that their system, the first one engineered from the ground up for OLED mass production, will dramatically improve yields and drive production costs lower. Kateeva says that this was achieved by three major technical breakthroughs: is features a production-worthy pure nitrogen process chamber, which doubles the lifetime in certain applications, it reduces particles by as much as 10X thanks to a specialized mechanical design and it offers exceptional film coating uniformity with a process window that’s 5X wider than standard technologies.

In October 7, LG Display announced that it will soon start mass producing flexible OLEDs. Today we have talked with LG Display officials, and they confirmed that mass production has indeed started. The company currently makes 6" panels that weigh just 7.2 grams are are only 0.44 mm thick (only a third of the thickness of LG's thinnest mobile LCDs).

LGD updates us that the current flexible OLED production capacity in their 4.5-Gen line is 6,000 substrates a month (previously we reported that capacity will be 12,000 substrates). Perhaps the rest of the capacity is dedicated to R&D. In any case 6,000 substrates a month means almost 400,000 6" panels - assuming 100% yields. Of course yields will be lower but it seems that LGD indeed means to produce a fair share of displays and it'll be interesting how they (or other companies) adopt these panels in products.

Encapsulix announced today that a "leading OLED lighting supplier in Europe" placed an order for the M500 ALD deposition system. This system will be delivered by the end of 2013, and will be used to encapsulate OLED panels for the residential, commercial, automotive and avionics markets.

Encapsulix's "infinity ALD" M500 equipment can deposit encapsulation coating on the order of 10-100 nm in thickness and can be scaled up to any substrate size. This particular system will support up to Gen-2 (400x500 mm) substrates and will be limited to rigid glass-based panels. But the company's systems can be used to deposit on flexible substrates and even be adopted for roll-to-toll production (up to one meter width).

OLED Encapsulation is a very hot topic, especially for flexible OLEDs. Samsung and LG are already producing flexible OLEDs, but the search for better encapsulation technologies is still on. ALD, or Atomic Layer Deposition is one candidate for future deposition of OLED encapsulation. ALD is based on Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) that uses two vapors (gaseous) precursors which react on the substrate which creates a solid thin film. ALD works in relatively low temperatures which means it is suitable for all substrates including plastics.

One of the leaders in ALD is Finland's Beneq. Beneq developed an inorganic barrier film called nClear which is deposited using ALD. Beneq says that nClear provides "world class" barrier performance and can be deposited at temperatures well below 100 degrees Celsius. Beneq offers the TFS-600 (Gen-2.5, 500x400 mm) which is used for industrial-scale OLED encapsulation. Beneq's director of Technical sales, Mikko Soderlund, was kind enough to answer a few questions we had on the company's technology and business. Mikko is leading the application development and commercialization of ALD-based thin-film encapsulation technology for OLEDs. He has a PhD in Photonics from Helsinki University of Technology (2009).

Update: Samsung Display announced today that it too has began flexible OLED mass production. Samsung is making 5.7" Full-HD panels and they expect to release the first phone to use them within days.

LG Display announced today that it will start mass producing flexible OLEDs for smartphones. It's not clear whether they actually started panel production or whether production will start soon. LG said that they aim to take an early lead in the flexible display market and introduce new products with "enhanced performance and differentiated designs" next year.

LGD revealed some information about the first flexible OLED panel to be produced. It is a 6" panel that weighs just 7.2 grams and is only 0.44 mm thin. Last week we reported on rumors about LG's upcoming flexible OLED phone - with a 6" display indeed. It may be that those rumors actually referred to these production news as the first device is only expected in 2014 and not "within days" as the rumors suggested.