OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status - Page 6

Researchers from South China University of Technology (SCUT) demonstrated a new MgO-based OLED encapsulation layer. The researchers say that MgO provides an efficient barrier at a low cost, and can be deposited in low temperatures.

The researchers say that this is the first time that MgO is used for OLED encapsulation, but this material has a number of advantages - a low refractive index, a wide bandgap, high dielectric constant, high chemical stability and the lack of UV irradiation treatment requirements.

In September 2013, Veeco acquired Synos Technology for $185 million for the company's FAST-ALD flexible OLED encapsulation technology. Veeco did received a purchase order from SDC for a first-generation FAST-ALD prototype system, but the significant orders Veeco hopes to achieve never materialized.

In early 2015 Veeco announced that they do not see near-term revenue coming from this sector. Yesterday Veeco decided to significantly reduce future investments in its ALD technology development. Veeco says that some "competitive technologies" solved the display makers problems and it now sees ALD business pushed back two or three years.

A few days ago we reported that Kateeva says it has taken a "commanding lead" in the OLED thin film encapsulation (TFE) market with its ink-jet based systems. Kateeva's ink-jet printers are used to deposit organic materials, but the full TFE stack also contains in-organic materials.

Currently both LG and Samsung producers are using PECVD to deposit the in-organic materials, but according to a report from ETNEws, both Korean display makers are thinking about switching to ALD. Several companies, including Jusung Engineering, WONIK IPS, AP Systems and TES has ALD-based encapsulation deposition systems ready to be used in display production. Both LG and Samsung have finished with R&D work on ALD technology and are ready to introduce commercial systems into their production lines.

OLED ink-jet developer Kateeva started to offer ink-jet based encapsulation systems in 2014, used to protect flexible OLED panels. Kateeva's encapsulation performance is excellent and it was already reported that these systems are used in flexible OLED mass production - and today Kateeva announced that it takes a "commanding lead" in the OLED thin-film encapsulation (TEF) market.

Kateeva further says that it secured the "vast majority" of available TFE orders, and its customers include the world's largest flat-panel display makers in three key Asia regions - which probably includes Korea and China - and the third region is either Taiwan or Japan.

Smithers Apex released a new report (Future of High-Barrier Films and Coatings for Printed Electronics to 2021) in which they see the global barrier film (encapsulation) market growing from $61.2 million in 2016 to $192.4 million in 2021 - a CAGR of 25%.

OLED display is the largest application for barrier films. In 2016, small rigid OLED displays barrier films were worth $16 million. Looking forward, small flexible OLEDs will be where growth will come from.

ALD equipment maker Encapsulix developed a new ALD system (the Infinity 200) that is optimized for deposition on 200 mm substrates - for both R&D or manufacturing systems. The new system offers several advanced features especially suited for thin-film low-temperature encapsulation deposition on flexible substrates, particular for OLED displays.

Encapsulix announced that the new system was successfully installed and qualified for ultrafast OLED encapsulation at Leti, the CEA Tech research institute in Grenoble, France. Additional systems will be delivered in the next 12 months to customers in Asia.

In 2013, the 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 basic idea behind iOLED is to invert the structure between the electrodes of a bottom-emission OLED. The electrodes are based on an organic material (polyethyleneimine) and not Lithium-based like most electrodes.

NHK iOLED (2015)

In 2015, NHK demonstrated a full-color iOLED display that uses a film substrate. The company now demonstrated the same display - more than one year after it was fabricated - still working even though there is almost no encapsulation.

Kateeva recently announced a large $88 million Series-E funding round, and the ink-jet equipment maker today announced that Ink-Jet guru Eli Vronsky has been promoted to the company's Chief Product Officer.

During our recent visit to San Francisco, we caught up with Kateeva’s executive team on a break from their presentations on inkjet printing for flexible OLEDs. Chief Product Officer Eli Vronsky gave us an update, as well as an overview of the company’s product strategy.

Leveraging on their unique, distinctive properties, OLEDs are enabling brand new lighting and display opportunities, giving rise to an entire portfolio of portable, fully conformable, feather-light and, possibly, low power high definition display devices.

Anyway, OLEDs are nowadays facing the same issues they had since the beginning: basically, OLED materials are extremely sensitive to oxidizing agents and, especially, to moisture. This requires encapsulation materials with exceptionally high barrier properties, and active fillers or getters, capable of absorbing water on a single molecule basis. The optimization of many functional properties in single encapsulating materials is a very complex materials science problem. The fact that OLED materials can also be very sensitive to heat or radiations, generates many process constraints as well.

The Fraunhofer FEP announced new large-area flexible OLED lighting panel prototypes that have been fabricated on ultra-thin glass and encapsulated with a ultra-thin glass foil in the same process.

The new process developed at the Fraunhofer institute is able to deposit OLEDs on the flexible glass and encapsulation it using an additional flexible glass layer - all in a a single roll-to-roll manufacturing step.