Samsung considers building a 8.5-Gen AMOLED fab for IT displays

In the last couple of years, we have seen increased adoption of AMOLED displays in laptops. Earlier this year Samsung stated that it will release 10 new OLED displays for laptops in 2021, and reports suggested that the company is looking into building a dedicated 6-Gen production line for laptop AMOLEDs.

According to a new report from Korea, Samsung is considering building a 8.5-Gen (2200x2500 mm) production line for IT AMOLED displays. This will be the first time such a fab is used to create OLED displays. LG Display has 8.5-Gen lines, but these are used to deposit WOLED panels, and not side-by-side RGB OLEDs.

Such a new fab will likely require new process technologies - at least for the backplane part. Samsung could produce the backplane on the whole substrate, and then do the OLED deposition on smaller glasses cut from the main glass. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. According to the reports, Samsung reached out to potential backplane technology suppliers (such as Wonik IPS, TEL, and others) to begin development of suitable technologies.

Some other reports suggest that one of the main reasons behind the new fab is Apple's aim to start adopting AMOLEDs in future laptops.