Backplane

Photonics-based solutions provider Coherent announced their financial results for Q2 2024, with revenues of $1.3 billion, a 9.1% increase over 2023. The rise in revenues is mostly thanks for strong demand for the company's AI-related datacom transceiver business. 

As part of the quarter results announcements, Coherent also announced that it received its first volume order for its new linebeam annealing systems for 8-Gen AMOLED fabs, used to produce IT displays for tablets, laptops and monitors.

Omdia says that in 2028, LTPO will overtake LTPS as the leading smartphone OLED backplane technology. By 2031, smartphone LTPO OLED panel shipments will reach 520 million units, with a 52% market share (of all smartphone OLED displays).

Omdia sees the smartphone OLED market rising in the next 10 years. In 2031, over one billion OLED smartphone panels will ship. In 2024, Omdia sees a sharp increase of 24% in smartphone OLED shipments (compared to 2023), which will surpass 800 million units. 

OLED displays have been gaining popularity rapidly, and are already the dominant smartphone display technology. OLEDs are also the display technology of choice in the smartwatch market, making inroads into the TV, monitor, laptop and tablet markets. The future of the OLED industry looks bright.

In recent years, the focus of the industry, beyond increasing capacity and reducing production costs, has been improving the performance of OLEDs in the areas of display brightness, efficiency, and lifetime. Brightness is required in many applications - from TVs (for HDR and to view in ambient lighting) through smartphones (outdoor viewing) to automotive, and efficiency is a plus in any scenario (but mostly in mobile displays). Display lifetime is already good enough for many applications, but in some cases (like automotive, and IT displays) it is critical. These three properties usually go together - if you can make more efficient OLED displays, you can drive them at a lower current to achieve the same brightness, and so lifetime increases, or you can achieve higher brightness, etc. 

Apple was the first company to develop LTPO backplanes and it adopted this innovative and energy-efficient backplane technology back in 2018 in the Watch Series 4. LTPO combines Oxide-TFT and LTPS, by using the IGZO in some of the switching TFTs and LTPS in the remaining switching TFTs and all the driving TFTs. LTPO can reduce the power consumption by 5-15%, and enables variable refresh rate.

According to reports from Korea, Apple developed its 2nd-Gen LTPO backplane technology, that uses the IGZO in all the driving TFTs, and uses LTPS only in the remaining switching TFTs. This leads to higher efficiency compared to the first-generation LTPO backplane.

UK-based OTFT display backplane developer SmartKem announced that it signed a collaboration agreement with based PMOLED-maker RiTdisplay, for the production of OTFT-based AMOLED displays. SmartKem further said that Innovate UK and the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs will support this project with a grant of around $530,000.

Smartkem will provide its proprietary OTFT materials to RiTdisplay to integrate within its OLED displays. If successful, the project will create the world's first commercially ready AMOLED display made using organic transistors, which will outperform RiT's PMOLEDs with higher brightness, lower power consumption and higher resolutions. Both companies hope that the project will be completed in 2026. 

Earlier this year, we reported that Samsung filed a request at the US International Trade Commission (ITC) to ban BOE's aftermarket AMOLED panels in the US, as they infringe on Samsung's OLED patent. Following the request, the ITC started a formal investigation.

According to a new report from China, several OED makers in China (BOE, Tianma, TCL CSoT and Visionox) have joined forces and filed a motion to invalidate one of Samsung's main OLED patents in the US. This is a response to SDC's request to halt BOE's US aftermarket AMOLED panel sales.

The following is a sponsored post by Excyton

UK-based Excyton is happy to announce that it will showcase its novel TurboLED OLED architecture and technology at the 2023 Displayweek event (May 23-25, Los Angeles, California). Excyton has been accepted to participate at the 2023 I-Zone event.

TurboLED is a game-changing technology that offers a dramatic boost to the performance of displays. In a TurboLED OLED display, each pixel comprises deeper and lighter color red, green and blue emitters to maximize performance - in fact Excyton has shown that the TurboLED architecture leads to a 50% reduction in power consumption, a 3X improvement in emitter lifetime and an increased color gamut. TurboLED displays are especially suited for demanding applications, such as IT displays, automotive displays, gaming monitors, AR/VR headsets, smartphones and wearables.

The Fraunhofer FEP research institute announced that it has developed the world's highest-density OLED microdisplays, reaching a PPI of 10,000 with a pixel size of only 2.5 um. The Fraunhofer will demonstrate a 0.18" 1440x1080 (monochrome) OLED microdisplay next week at Display Week 2023.

The new microdisplays were produced on 300 mm wafers, using a 28 nm backplane process. The Fraunhofer explains that most OLED microdisplays to date are produced on 200 mm wafers, using CMOS processes ranging from 90-250 nm. The institutes new technologies enables the the performance increase in OLED display processing. 

Apple's interest in OLED displays for future iPad tablet device is not secret, and many analysts estimate that the first such device will be released in 2024.

One of Apple's requirement is for superior performance for its tablets compared to smartphone AMOLED displays - and so developers are relying on a tandem OLED structure. According to a new report from Korea, LG Display is developing another unique technology for Apple's iPads.

This is a sponsored post by Amorphyx, where display industry consultant Ian Hendy has interviewed Amorphyx's CEO John Brewer

Q: Can you start by telling us a little about what Amorphyx does, John?

Amorphyx has several fundamentally new technology platforms that provide for TFT performance improvements in three areas: (1) Switching speeds, with options to move to the Tera-Hz range ultimately, (2) Power, where the IGZO AMeTFT can achieve even lower power performance than today’s LTPO OLED Pro Motion displays and better refresh range, and (3) Small transistor size.

Our technology platforms are lower cost than the alternatives, and move from amorphous and crystalline semiconductor approaches, to devices based on different effects that do not have a semiconductor at all, yet can still drive a display, drive current, deliver grey scale and switch very fast. Or they can operate a flex IC at higher clock speeds than known today.

For now, our main commercial focus is on IGZO AMeTFT which is fundamentally a potential replacement transistor for LTPS or LTPO used in modern OLED phones and has the capability to replace more highly compensated LTPO circuits in modern Smartphone displays due to enhanced stability.