OLED ink jet printing: introduction and market status - Page 18

Two months ago AUO announced a 1.6" AMOLED for wearable applications. Now at SID Display Week 2014, AUO is showing this new display. The company says that this is the world's first 1.6" in-cell touch AMOLED. The panel is only 0.5 mm thick and is very power efficient.

AUO is also showing a 0.2 mm thick 5" flexible OLED prototype. This panel is made on a plastic substrate and it adopts thin film encapsulation technology - which enable it to reach a minimum bending radius of less than 1 cm.

US-based OLED inkjet startup Kateeva announced that it is expanding its facilities to create a dedicated manufacturing space - to build YIELDjet OLED ink-jet printing systems. The company aims to deploy YIELDjet systems in the "near future". The company also hired a new senior VP for customer satisfaction.

After years of development, Kateeva finally unveiled their OLED inkjet systems in November 2013. During the unveiling, we discussed Kateeva's technology and business with Dr. Conor Madigan, the company's President and Co-founder.

A report from Japan suggests that Panasonic decided to withdraw from the OLED TV business as production costs are too high for the Japanese company. According to the report, Panasonic hopes to sale its OLED business to Japan Display (an agreement is expected next month).

This report is not confirmed yet. It is rather surprising as Panasonic's OLED business is focused on TV panels, while Japan Display is producing small/medium displays. In the past few years, Panasonic focused on printing technologies using Sumitomo's PLED materials.

Merck announced that the PrintOLED project successfully concluded. During the project, the partners investigate several technologies (such as gravure, inkjet printing, slot-die coating and others) and were able to demonstrated OLEDs with homogeneously coated active areas of 10 cm² and 27 cm² by classic gravure printing and slot die coating (at least two of the layers were processed from solution).

Merck says that printing two organic layers one on top of the other was a major challenge. The partners achieved significant improvements with specific material sequences. They say that they managed to print with speeds of up to 3 m/s semiconducting OLED layers with a homogeneity meeting the quality standards of industrial-scale OLED production. The knowledge was also applied to OPV and sDSC solar cells.

Merck published an article on OLEDs in their Explorer Magazine, and in that article they reveal that AU Optronics is developing OLED ink-jet technologies with help from Merck.

AUO developed their own inkjet printer (with collaboration with suppliers), and they used it to develop a 14" printable OLED panel. Merck is working closely with AUO to supply them with soluble OLED materials. There's no word yet on how close this technology is for commercialization yet, and Merck did not reveal any details (or even a photo) of the 14" panel.

Tokyo Electron announced that it is now accepting orders for the Elius 2500 OLED inkjet printing system. This system can produce OLEDs on 8th gen glass substrates.

TEL started collaborating with Seiko Epson on OLED manufacturing technology in 2010. The companies signed an agreement to jointly-develop OLED display manufacturing technology that will integrate Epson's inkjet printing method and TEL's production equipment. So after about 3.5 years, we finally see the first product that resulted from this collaboration.

Pioneer announced that they began to mass produce OLED lighting modules made with a "wet coating system". The production technology was co-developed by Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical. The panels will be distributed by MC Pioneer OLED Lighting Corporation.

The two companies currently produce a single module that is 92.4 x 92.4 mm in size (active area 76x76 mm) and 4.3 mm thick. It weighs 42 grams. The color temperature is 2870K and the maximum luminance is 3,000 cd/m². Unfortunately they did not reveal the efficiency and lifetime of this OLED.

The SID Display Week, the world's leading display industry showcase is scheduled for June, but the organizers already published the list of papers to be presented in this show. Hiding in this long list of technical achievements and research projects are some interesting new OLED developments. So here's some of the achievements to be announced during the show (at no particular order).

TCL's China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) managed to fabricate a 7" QVGA (320x240) flexible PMOLED display. The display uses a thin PEN substrate, processed at Gen-4.5. The company also proposes a design for a 14" QVGA PMOLED panel. CSOT also developed a 31" Full-HD AMOLED panel that uses a IGZO backplane. The 31" direct-emission panel was produced on a Gen-4.5 glass substrate using FMM.

Market research company Yole Developpement released a new report (Market & Technology Trends in Materials & Equipment for Printed & Flexible Electronics) in which they estimate that by 2020, the equipment & materials market for printed & flexible electronics will reach $1.65 billion.

Yole estimates that the materials market will emerge in 2018, driven by the OLED industry (in 2020, the material market for printed and flexible OLEDs will reach $170 million). The equipment market will ramp-up in 2015. Yole expects the OLED equipment market to reach $1.3 billion in 2020.

Kateeva announced that the company is expanding its Korea operation, by absorbing the assets of Seoul-based OLED Plus - an OLED equipment design, sales, service and support company headed by OLED industry veteran, KB (Kyung Bin) Bae, who will become the general manager of Kateeva Korea, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kateeva.

Two months ago Kateeva unveiled their YIELDJet OLED ink-jet printing system. The company now says that interest in this technology is high - especially in Korea, and commercial shipments are "imminent".