Samsung and LG achieved major innovations in their OLED production processes

According to a new report by Korea's ETNews, both Samsung Display and LG Display managed to achieve major breakthrough in their OLED production processes. These new achievements will raise the production yields of OLED TV and flexible OLEDs.

So first up is LG Display, who applied a co-planar TFT with a top-gate structure that enabled the Oxide-TFT layer to become less vulnerable to the etching process. This results in better yields. This design has not yet been applied to the mass production lines. But in the upcoming M2 production line, LGD will use ALD technology instead of the current 2-partition deposition technology. This will reduce costs and improve process time.

Finally, LGD also developed a technology that can "revive" dead pixels using a laser beam. We don't have much details, but this can also of course improve the production yields.

While LGD is focused on OLED TVs, SDC is struggling with their encapsulation process for flexible OLEDs. The company is still using the Vitex method which is slow and expensive as it uses 6 (or 7 according to this report) different layers. The company managed to reduce the number of layers to only three, by changing the inorganic layer from ceramide to nitride. This means that the process is faster and has better yields.

We know that Samsung is also considering other encapsulation deposition technologies, including Veeco's FAST-ALD and Universal Display's UniversalBarrier.