OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status - Page 15

The EU launched a new €11.2-million 3-year project called Flex-o-Fab that aims to help commercialize flexible OLEDs within six years. The project partners will create a a pilot-scale modular yet integrated manufacturing chain for flexible OLEDs, and use it to develop reliable fabrication / production processes.

The Flex-o-Fab project will draw on technologies and expertise already used to produce glass-based OLEDs and flexible displays. It will look to migrate existing sheet-to-sheet processes to roll-to-roll (R2R) production to further reduce costs and enable high-volume production. The encapsulation, one of the key challenges of flexible panel production, will be the multilayer barrier technology developed by Holst Centre. The project will also develop novel anode technologies that will need to be transparent with low resistivity, reliable, robust and scalable for R2R production on foil substrates.

In early 2012, Samsung said they aim to start mass production of plastic-based flexible OLEDs towards the end of 2012. But 2012 is almost over, and new reports suggest that Samsung delayed their plans to early 2013.

But is Samsung really that close to mass production? One of the major hurdles towards plastic based OLEDs is the encapsulation technology. Back in early 2012 Samsung said they will use Vitex' technology (which they bought in 2010) - but this technology is difficult to scale and is very slow. When Samsung delayed the launch to 2013, it was reported that the main issue indeed was the slow encapsulation (that, and low uniformity).

Universal Display reported their financial results for Q3 2012. Revenues were $12.5 million (down from $21.8 million in Q3 2011). Net loss was $5.5 million (compared to a net income of $6.0 million in Q3 2011). UDC lowered their 2012 revenue forecast to be in the range of $80 to $82 million (previous expectations were $90 million to $110 million). This is obviously very disappointing, and UDC shares dropped about 40% after market (after falling 12% during the day).

So what went wrong?

The major setback from UDC's point of view is that Samsung Display did not adopt green emitter and host materials as expected. UDC still thinks SD will adopt green, probably early next year. Samsung is still using UDCs red PHOLED material, but they didn't add more production capacity and so red emitter sales are rather flat (although when compared to 2011, red emitter sales grew 89%) - and will probably continue to be so in the near future.

The Holst Center posted this short video showing how their flexible OLED lighting panel prototypes work under water, virtue of their thin-film protective barrier:

ETNews reports that Samsung decided to postpone its flexible OLED production to 2013, and will use those pilot lines to produce regular glass-based OLEDs. Samsung has to delay flexible OLEDs because of technical issues (low uniformity and slow encapsulation) - but also because they need more OLED capacity because of high demand for larger AMOLED displays.

Samsung Display can currently produce 56,000 5.5-Gen (1300x1500 mmm) glass substrates a month. The pilot lines used for flexible OLED development can produce 8,000 more substrates monthly, bringing the total to 64,000.

Update: Nanomarkets released the executive summary of this report, well worth a read...

NanoMarkets released a new report on OLED encapsulation (Markets for OLED Encapsulation Materials 2012-2019) - in which they forecast that the sales of OLED encapsulation materials for OLED TVs and lighting will grow from virtually zero in 2012 to $625 million in 2019 ($150 for OLED TVs and $475 for OLED lighting).

Rigid cover glass sales will grow from $20 million in 2012 to $432 million in 2019. Flexible glass encapsulation will reach $270 million. Nontraditional encapsulation materials (such as ALD conformal coating, multilayer barriers, etc.) will remain quite small for some time.

Beneq announced that a leading Asian customer has ordered a large-area batch atomic layer deposition (ALD) coating system. This system will be used to develop flexible OLED products. Beneq's batch ALD systems offer a unique combination of excellent thin-film quality, high-throughput and large-area processing capabilities, enabling scale-up of demanding thin-film processes.

Asian OLED makers are getting ready to start producing flexible OLEDs. Last month we heard that Aixtron delivered a production-scale PRODOS Gen-3.5 Polymer Vapor Phase Deposition (PVPD) system to a "major prestigious Asian customer" (probably Samsung or LG) that plans to use it to produce novel flexible electronic devices. We know that Samsung plans to release their first plastic-based flexible OLED panels by the end of 2012 while LG plans to start mass production of flexible OLEDs in the second half of 2013.

The three-year long NEMO (NEw Materials for OLEDs from solutions) project has been successfully concluded. Merck, the project's leader, says that the new soluble materials developed in the project can now be used in large-area OLED display and lighting panels. The new phosphorescent materials have an increased lifetime (200,000 hours for green) and efficiency (70 cd/A @ 1,000 cd/m²).

NEMO was a large €29 million project, co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project's scope included emitter materials, charge transport materials and new adhesives for reliable encapsulation of each OLED component. The partners also performed physical tests on the materials and on the OLED components in order to gain more in-depth knowledge for future material developments.

The Holst Centre and Rolic Technology have entered into a research partnership on protective moisture barriers for flexible electronics applications such as OLED and OPV. Rolic will develop new materials that will enable commercialization of of high-end flexible barriers and solutions for improved light out-coupling.

The Holst Centre aims to develop this thin film barrier fabrication technology for sheet-to-sheet (S2S) application as well as roll-to-roll (R2R). The focus of this projects seems to be OLED lighting, but this will also apply to OLED displays and OPV panels. In the photo above (sent by the Holst Centre) you can see an OLED panel with black spot defects (left), and the same panel, protected by a thin film barrier, without defects. The panels themselves are Philips Lumiblade OLED lighting panels, made on rigid glass.

Universal Display announced that it is buying Fujifilm's entire worldwide OLED patent portfolio - over 1,200 OLED patents and patent applications for $105 million. UDC will not only strengthen its existing OLED patent portfolio, but will also "explore new and exciting areas of OLED materials and product development for the future". Fujifilm will supply their highly functional materials (barrier films, conductive films, flexible substrates and more) to OLED makers. In the future the two companies intend to strengthen and enhance this alliance.

Fujifilm has been involved with OLED R&D for over 10 years, and have developed "promising new technologies in OLED materials as well as devices using such materials". We don't have a lot of information about those patents, besides the fact that they revolve around Platinum based phosphorescent OLEDs, blue phosphorescent materials and device structures.