OLED ink jet printing: introduction and market status - Page 20

Some web sites are reporting that Panasonic is set to unveil a 20" 4K OLED tablet at the IFA 2013 event next week. Those sites are relying on auto-translated Japanese text. But in fact the company will not show such a tablet. In an English PR, Panasonic says they will show a 4K 20" tablet and a 4K OLED panel prototype - those are two different devices.

I'm guessing Panasonic's 4K OLED panel will be the same 56" 4K (3840x2160) OLED TV panel shown at CES 2013. This panel was made using an "all-printing" method. Sumitomo Chemical revealed that this TV prototype used the company's PLED materials. Panasonic's panel uses a substrate (probably Oxide-TFT) provided by Sony (which are actually made by AU Optronics) - as part of the two companies collaboration.

Merck posts an interesting presentation detailing the company's OLED business. And it includes some interesting details. So first of all, Merck says that if OLEDs advances further, it could gain a meaningful share in the TV market. In fact, they forecast OLED panels to grab 10-15% of the total display market by 2019. By surface area, the market will grow to around 50 km², mostly from OLED TV applications.

Merck is still focused on OLED printing technologies over evaporation technologies as the technological advantages will enable cheaper large area panels. According to this presentation, in 2010 Merck started to collaborate with Epson on printable OLEDs (which is interesting as officially they announced this alliance in October 2012). Anyway Merck says that this alliance created a "significant momentum" in OLED printing technology. as you can see from the chart below which shows Merck's OLED development advances over time:

Cynora, Novaled and the University of Regensburg will co-develop new soluble (printable) materials for low-cost high efficiency OLED lighting devices. This new project, called cyCESH is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with €6.1 million.

Professor Yersin's group a the University of Regensburg will handle material development while Cynora will handle subsequent synthesis and optimization. Novaled will be in handle the application of solution-based-processed, doped transport layers. These three partners form a complete comprehensive partnership for OLED applications.

France based Genes'Ink launched a new silver-based solvent conductive ink for digital and screen printing. One of the major application they are targeting is the printing of efficient and transparent electrodes on flexible substrates for OLED displays. In fact Genes'Ink says that this ink will work on most substrates and is ready to use. It is compatible with most print heads.

Genes'Ink technology is based on research done at the universities of Marseilles and Grenoble. They claim that their technology offers superior conductivity at a competitive price.

Sumitomo Chemical announced it has developed a new PLED inkjet-printing technology that achieves 423 PPI on glass substrates sized 370x470 mm. We don't have more information about Sumitomo's new production process, but apparently it isn't ready for commercialization yet as the company says they will "continue to improve the performance and process of PLED materials".

Panasonic printed P-OLED 56-inch OLED prototype

Panasonic used Sumitomo's PLED materials in their 56" 4K2K printed OLED TV prototype shown at CES 2013. Panasonic and Sumitomo has been collaborating on OLED TVs since 2009. The companies hope that ink-jet printing will enable them to lower the production costs of OLED panels compared to evaporation based production. Panasonic aims to launch their first OLED TVs in 2015. The company is collaborating with Sony, and may setup a production-JV together (although if this happens, it's not clear which production technology will be used).

Sumitomo Chemical unveiled new flexible PLED lighting panels. These structured panels (they have a patterned printed on them) are produced in an ink-jet printed process. Sumitomo showed several lamp prototypes, including the one shown below:

Sumitomo plans to start volume production of such panels by March 2015 (fiscal year 2014) - using both ink-jet and roll-to-roll processes. They still need to extend the lifetime of their panels, improve the luminance performance and improve their production yield rates.

OLED Technologies & Solutions (OTS) released a new corporate presentation video which introduces the company and their new inkjet-printing based OLED processing line, the PCA-48:

The PCA-48 line is a 4.5-Gen (730x920 mm) line that incorporates TFE, Ink-Jet Printing, and high vacuum transportation technologies. OTS uses Merck polymer and Small-Molecule materials and their production line supports all substrates (including a-Si using Ignis' technology). OTS that they can deliver and install a complete production line within 12 months, and a single line will be able to produce 40 million smartphone displays in a year. This is the line that AIV-BEX wants to use in their proposed AMOLED production fab.

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.

A few weeks ago we reported about Merck's new Taiwanese technology development center that is focused on OLEDs (but will also work on flexible displays, LED lighting and 3D displays). Merck held an official inauguration ceremony and they revealed some interesting details.

We already know that Merck OLED materials are "used commercially in many products on the market". But during the ceremony the company revealed that LG's 55" OLED TV, now on sale in Korea for $10,000, is using the company's materials.

Nanomarkets released a new white paper about solution-Processed OLEDs. They estimate that in order for the OLED market to grow significantly for TV and lighting applications, companies must adopt solution-processable materials. Soluble OLEDs have been researched for years with very little outcome outside of the lab. But Nanomarkets believes that the current problems can be fixed, and are worth fixing.

Soluble OLED materials and appropriate processes are being researched by Sumitomo, DuPont, Pioneer, UDC, Solvay, Marck and others. They estimate that the first panels to be made using these materials will be Pioneer's (together with Mitsubishi) OLED lighting panels - planned for 2014. Nanomarkets thinks that if Pioneer succeeded, it may push GE back into the OLED game with their own soluble material solutions. It's interesting that Nanomarkets does not mention Panasonic's OLED TV prototype that uses Sumitomo's P-OLED materials.