OLED Encapsulation: introduction and market status - Page 9

Aixtron has acquired US-based thin-film encapsulation (TFE) developer PlasmaSi for $16 million. Aixtron will combine the encapsulation technology with its OVPD OLED deposition equipment. Aixtron will also integrate PlasmaSi’s thin-film encapsulation process into its existing OLED cluster for customer demonstration purposes.

Aixtron OVPD R&D Demo Cluster

PlasmaSi developed organic thin-film deposition technology based on very low temperature silicon nitride Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD). The technology can also be used to deposit large-area OLED lighting panels and flexible Integrated Circuits.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) awarded two small-business SBIR Phase-2 projects targeting advances in solid-state lighting technology, and both projects deal with OLED lighting technologies.

The first project, led by Pixelligent Technologies is titled "Advanced Light Extraction Material for OLED Lighting". Pixelligent, in collaboration with OLEDWorks, will demonstrate a new internal light extraction structure for OLED lighting panels, that is fully compatible with current manufacturing processes and operating conditions. The ILE structure is cost-effective and offers a high high refractive index.

Finland's VTT Technical Research Centre developed a new technique to deposit patterned OLED lighting elements on flexible plastic films. This could enable a low-cost process technology to make flexible light emitting structured films - which they see used mostly in advertisement campaigns.

The new room-temperature deposition technology uses standard traditional gravure and screen printing - which means it may be possible to use in regular printing houses. The process makes OLED lighting stripes which are 0.2 mm thick and uses polymer based OLED emitters.

In September 2013, Veeco acquired Synos Technology for $185 million for the company's FAST-ALD flexible OLED encapsulation technology. Veeco later received a purchase order from SDC for a first-generation FAST-ALD prototype system. Veeco expected a manufacturing ramp to begin in 2014 - hoping to book more than $75 in ALD production systems by the end of the year, but this never happened.

Veeco now reported their financial results for Q4 2014, and while the company says they "successfully demonstrated its FAST-ALD technology for flexible OLED encapsulation", they currently do not see any near-term revenue coming from this sector.

According to ETNews, AP Systems won a contract to supply two Excimer Laser Annealing (ELA) systems to China's Truly Semiconductors for its OLED fab. While ETNews does not mention it, this is likely to be used in Truly's upcoming 4.5-Gen AMOLED fab in Huizhou, China.

The contact is worth 18 billion Korean Won (about $16.6 million). AP Systems already provided similar systems to China's CSOT, GVO and EverDisplay. AP Systems hopes to also supply encapsulation systems to Truly in April 2015. The company is concentrating all of its efforts to develop OLED production equipment.

Kateeva unveiled a new mass production flexible OLED thin film encapsulation (TFE) system based on their ink-jet technology. The YIELDjet FLEX can enable cost-effective encapsulation deposition, and Kateeva says that the first mass-production system will ship to a customer in Asia later this month. This customer is probably Samsung Display (which recently invested in Kateeva), but this is not confirmed.

Kateeva says that inkjet printing enables superb particle performance, high efficiency and excellent scalability. The YIELDjet system is enclosed in a pure-nitrogen chamber, which is the best OLED processing environment, shielding the OLED materials from moisture and air. The ink-jet system provides exceptional planarization of substrate surface structures and particles and results in unprecedented film uniformity.

Researchers at the Fraunhofer FEP Institute demonstrated new UV-emitting OLED devices that can be used as low-cost personal diagnostic devices. The German research institute demonstrated two OLED devices, one emitting in the near-UV and another in the green spectral range. Both can be integrated to sensor applications.

The Fraunhofer showed sample sensors that integrate both the OLED deices and photo-detectors with tunable spectral characteristics. The green OLED is a top-emitting OLED that has a thin-film optical filter and thin-film encapsulation - so that a sample substrate can be brought to be very close to the excitation source.

Nippon Electric Glass (NEG) developed the world's thinnest glass plate (only 30 um thick). The G-Leaf glass can be used as a substrate for flexible OLED displays, and NEG demonstrated a flexible OLED that is only 90 um thick (sandwiched between two G-Leaf sheets).

NEG uses their "overflow method" technology to manufacture the new glass plates. Reportedly the glass feels like a plastic film and does not break even when crumpled (see photo below).

Several OLED markets are heating up - OLED TVs, Flexible OLEDs, wearables, OLED lighting, the automotive market... Barry Young from the OLED Association, one of the world's top OLED experts, was kind enough to offer his views and opinion on the OLED market.

Q: What is your expectation from the OLED TV market in the next 1-3 years? Will LG be the only player (and if so what will be their capacity) or will Samsung and perhaps other enters the market too?

LG chose to implement the metal oxide/White OLED approach and has succeeded, where Samsung’s choice of LTPS/Small Mask Scanning (SMS) has proven too expensive to pursue even with ~80% yields.

IDTechEx estimates that the barrier (encapsulation) layers for flexible electronics market will reach over $200 million by 2024. This will be driven mostly by flexible OLED displays for phones, tablets and wearables. Following is details regarding the different technologies adopted by Samsung, LG and others.

Samsung is using Vitex's multilayer thin-film encapsulation (TFE) using three layers (this is a new achievement, up until now they had to use at least 6 layers). While Samsung will still use this technology for its current and next-gen displays, Samsung is also considering other encapsulation deposition technologies, including Veeco's FAST-ALD and Universal Display's UniversalBarrier.