OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status - Page 14

Nanomarkets published a new edition of their OLED Material Market report, and they have some interesting forecasts and insights. Basically the company is upbeat on OLED displays for mobile devices, and the OLED TV market as well. While they are still cautiously optimistic that the long-term prospects for OLED lighting, they say that it will take many more years for this to become a major outlet for OLED materials.

Nanomarkets projects that the total market for OLED materials will grow from about $450 million in 2013 to over $4.6 billion by the end of 2020 - mostly from mobile displays and OLED TVs. Core OLED materials (emitters, hosts, dopants, HIL, HTL, etc. but excluding substrates, encapsulation, electrodes, etc.) will grow from $265 million in 2013 to over $1.6 billion by 2020.

The Holst Centre released a few nice videos, and I think they're worth a watch. First up is the one about their flexible OLED display research. Last year Holst and imec announced a new program to develop high resolution flexible OLED displays, with a focus on a mechanically flexible encapsulation film and TFT backplane, printed high-efficiency OLED and new materials and processes. The video below shows their first display (which was already unveiled last month):

In this new video you can see that the display is monochrome (red) and contains several defects.

The OLED Association posted an interesting article today in which they say that Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note 3 phone (phablet?) will use a YOUM display (a plastic-based unbreakable flexible OLED). Samsung will unveil the new phone at IFA 2013 (September) and will launch it in Q4 2013.

Galaxy Note II

Samsung YOUM displays use a plastic (Polyimide) substrate, an LTPS backplane, direct-emission RGB patterned OLED sub pixels and thin-film encapsulation (using Vitex's multi-layer technology). It's not known yet what the size and resolution of this particular display, but the OLED-A estimates it will be at least 5.9" in size, but probably will not achieve Full-HD resolution. The Note 3 will also not use a curved display.

EMDEOLED is a German company that is developing an OLED based light bulb for residential lighting in collaboration with the University of Technology Braunschweig. Basically the idea is that using an inner-coating process, they are creating a replacement for regular bulbs in which the glass is coated from the inside. They have developed their first prototypes, shown below (unfortunately they did not disclose any technical details):

EMDEOLED's OLEDs are ITO-free, and they have actually developed two prototypes - one with PLEDs and one with SM-OLEDs. The company says that the inner coating results in a very high material yield (and so hopefully will be cheaper than flat OLEDs). The OLED bulbs are also easy to seal as the glass actually protects the OLEDs from the outside.

Beneq announced that together with Fraunhofer's COMEDD, they have developed a new R&D thin film ALD encapsulation system for 200×200 mm OLED and OPV substrates. This system is now available - and in a few months they will deliver the first one to COMEDD.

The new encapsulation system is based on a cross-flow reactor, which has been optimized for the shortest possible cycle time, even at low processing temperatures, such as under 100 Celsius. This allows for rapid OLED prototyping and enables process scale-up for large areas and high throughput. Beneq's new system can be used as a stand-alone system, and it can also be integrated with an MBraun glove box.

Update: according to the OLED Association, Samsung in fact does plan to launch the first plastic based OLEDs in 2013, and these will be used in the Note 3 phone/tablet (will ship in Q4 2013).

Samsung officially launched their YOUM flexible OLED displays at CES 2013, and many hoped that they will be able to start producing those displays in 2013. Now it is reported that the company still hasn't managed to overcome the technical issues with their encapsulation technology - and they may have to delay their introduction of the flexible panels.

Samsung's current encapsulation technology is Vitex's multi-layer technology which is very slow (the panel has to enter the evaporation chamber 6 times). Samsung is busy upgrading this technology, and according to the new reports, they managed to shorten the encapsulation process. But apparently this is not enough for mass production yet.

Nanomarkets released a new white paper in which they discuss whether there's a real market for novel encapsulation technologies (focusing on OLED and PV applications). While the total encapsulation market for these two applications is large (around $500 million in 2013, growing to $2 billion by 2019), most of it will be rigid glass.

In fact in 2015 only 21.3% of the market will use novel encapsulation, and this only grow to 26.9% by 2019. In terms of revenue, the novel encapsulation market for OLED sand PVs will grow from about $50 million in 2013 to just over $500 million in 2019, and most of it will be for PV applications, OLEDs will only reach about $100 by 2019.

Back in October 2012 Nanomarkets released a new report (Markets for OLED Encapsulation Materials 2012-2019), and now they published an executive summary of this report which is well worth a read. Nanomarkets forecasts that OLED encapsulation will grow from $20 million in 2013 to over $850 by 2019. Most of the growth will come from large area panels (for OLED TVs and lighting) and flexible displays, and the most popular technology will remain rigid glass in the foreseeable future.

Nanomarkets also discusses the challenge of pricing and investments in encapsulation companies, the main one being that the market for non-traditional (i.e. other than rigid-glass) encapsulation material will remain small (not exceeding $100 million until at least 2017).

We've just got word from LG Chem that the company now plans to start mass producing the world's first flexible OLED lighting panels in July 2013 (and also high-efficiency 80 lm/W rigid panels). This is exciting news and if LG Chem will indeed go through with this plan it will be an important milestone for OLED lighting. Those OLED panels will be 200 x 50 mm in size and will feature 45 lm/W and a color temperature of 4,000K.

LG's flexible panels are only 0.33 mm thick and weigh under 8 grams - which not only allows new design possibilities but is also useful for energy saving for applications sensitive to weight (electric cars, airplanes, submarines, etc).

Last month Universal Display gave an update regarding their UniversalBarrier single-layer encapsulation technology. They said that the technology is being evaluation by Samsung, and that UDC has a working 6" R&D deposition machine for the encapsulation layer. UDC said the technology is not ready for Samsung's Gen-5.5 line yet.

UDC posted a new job opening today for a Flexible OLED lighting researcher, to do some "advanced development of UDC’s thin film OLED encapsulation technology". The candidate "may take part in technology transfer of the process technologies from UDC’s Pilot Line into a customer’s mass production environment. This may involve frequent international travel". It seems that the company is indeed adapting its technology for Samsung's flexible OLED line.