OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status - Page 13

A couple of days ago we reported that Veeco acquired Synos Technology who designs and manufactures FAST-ALD encapsulation technology for flexible OLED displays. Veeco said that Synos' first pilot production system has been installed and the manufacturing ramp is currently expected to begin in 2014.

Now financial services firm Wedbush released a new report on this deal and they say they believe that Synos has been working with an industry leader - specifically Samsung since 2011. According to Wedbush, Synos expected the product shipment to start in Q4 2013 or Q1 2014. We know that Veeco paid $70 million plus $115 if certain milestons are reached - and it makes sense that if Samsung adopts Synos' technology it will make it much more lucrative for Veeco.

Veeco announced that is it going to acquire privately held Synos Technology who designs and manufactures Fast Array Scanning Atomic Layer Deposition systems (FAST-ALD) for flexible OLED displays. Veeco will pay an initial $70 million, and according to performance milestones, the total deal may grow to $185 million.

Veeco says that they believe Synos' technology will remove the barrier to adoption of flexible OLED displays. Synos' first pilot production system has been installed and the manufacturing ramp is currently expected to begin in 2014. Veeco says that in the future they also see FAST-ALD used in OLED TV, lighting, solar, batteries and other large adjacent markets.

AU Optronics announced today that it will show new 4.3" flexible AMOLED panels at the Touch Taiwan 2013 conference next week (August 28-30). The new flexible panels are thinner than AUO's previous prototypes at 0.2 mm (vs 0.3 mm before). This is far thinner than LGD's thinnest LCD display announced last week (1.21 mm). AUO's panels use a plastic substrate and thin film encapsulation.

AUO flexible OLED prototype (2011)

AUO will only showcase the company's 5" Full-HD AMOLED panels unveiled earlier in 2013. These panels features the world's highest resolution density at 443 ppi. The company will also show new panels which are 5" 720p (i.e. lower resolution than the FHD ones but at the same size). AUO refers to these as HD720 AMOLED.

Rolic and Roth & Rau agreed to jointly develop system solutions for the organic electronics and display market. The partnership will bring together Rolic’s competences in materials and device fabrication and Roth & Rau’s expertise in integrated process equipment.

In the first stage of this agreement, the two companies will offer barrier and encapsulation technologies. for flexible OLEDs, OPVs and other flexible organic electronics. Roth & Roe's R&D facility is close by to Rolic's newly established OLED-focused technical center in Eindhoven and they both hope that this will enable to quickly bring their joint solutions to the market.

Visionox sent us two interesting updates. First of all, the company started the construction of a new 5.5-Gen AMOLED mass production line. Visionox says that according to current plans they expect to start production in the 2nd half of 2014. We do not have more details about this line and the AMOLED panels they plan to produce in it.

In addition, Visionox developed a new 3.5" monochrome flexible AMOLED. The panel has a maximum bending radius of 10 mm. Visionox says they use thin-film encapsulation for this panel.

Researchers from Germany's TU Darmstadt University developed new glowing fibers by coating them with white OLED emitters. They call their technology reproducible rotational coating and they envision all sorts of possibilities in the area of smart textiles, as in the future it'll be possible to coat all sorts of semiconductor components (such as transistors or solar cells) on fibers.

The researchers use vacuum deposition and small-molecule OLEDs for this process. They deposit seven different layers but the whole OLED is just 200 nanometers thick. OLEDs require a very smooth substrate and so currently they use glass fibers - which aren't really useful in wearable applications as they are too brittle to be woven into textiles. They are now starting to experiment with polymer-coated glass fibers that may be flexible enough to be used in textiles.

Rolic opened a new development facility in the Netherlands focused on OLED technologies. This will accelerate the company's OLED development and bring them into production, in close cooperation with locally specialized production companies.

In September 2012 Rolic have entered into a research partnership with the Holst Centre, with an aim to develop protective moisture barriers (encapsulation) for flexible electronics applications such as OLED and OPV. As part of that partnership, Rolic are developing new materials that will enable commercialization of of high-end flexible barriers and solutions for improved light out-coupling. This new development center will focus on the implementation and commercialization of those research and development results.

In February 2013 LG Chem unveiled their flexible OLED lighting panels, with plans to start producing them in July 2013 (they now aim to do so in September 2013, a slight delay). Those panels use a thin-glass substrate and a metal protective layer with LG Chem's Face-Seal encapsulation.

Today LG Chem announced that they developed new plastic-based (transparent polyimide) OLED lighting panels (shown in the photos above and below). These panels are more bendable (see photo above) than the current metal/glass ones, and LG Chem refers to them as "Plastic Film type Truly-Flexible OLED Panels". The company aims to mass produce these new panels in H1 2015. The new panels are even lighter than the current ones (which are only 0.33 mm thick and weigh under 8 grams).

Japan Broadcasting Corp (NHK) and Nippon Shokubai developed a new OLED structure (called inverted OLED, or iOLED) that drastically improves oxygen and moisture resistances. The two companies demonstrated a prototype 5" QVGA (320x240, 80 PPI) red monochrome panel that uses the new structure.

The basic iOLED idea is to invert the structure between the electrodes of a bottom-emission OLED. So in an iOLED, on top of a transparent negative electrode (ITO), you place the EIL, ETL, emitter layer, HTL and finally the positive electrodes. According to the two companies, this structure makes the OLED more resistant. The brightness (or light emitting area) of a normal OLED will decrease by half within 100 days if it is exposed to air (due to the oxidation of the negative electrode). An iOLED will will hardly deteriorate in these conditions.

NHK's Science & Technology Research Laboratories (STRL) unveiled a new 8" flexible OLED prototype panel. The panel features a resolution of 640x480 (100 ppi) and is based on an amorphous InGaZnO (a-IGZO) TFT backplane.

STRL says that the red emitter material is a new phosphorescent material that is made from a benzoquinoline derivative host doped with a platinum based complex. The encapsulation is made from a polymer material.