Direct emission - Page 8

LG Electronics announced today that their curved 55" OLED TV is now available in the US, exclusively through Magnolia stores inside Best Buy. The 55EA9800 costs $14,999 (in South Korea it costs around $13,500) and it is currently on display in Best Buy's store in Richfeld, Minnesota.

In the following weeks more stores will display and sell the OLED TV (in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and San Antonio) and later on more stores will offer it. According to Pocket Lint, LG's TV is "jaw-droppingly stunning". LG's curved OLED TV features an Oxide-TFT WRGB Full-HD OLED panel (like LG's 55EM9700 'flat' OLED TV). The TV features "infinite" contrast ratio, passive 3D, Smart Touch Controls and a "paper-slim" design (it's only 4.3 mm thick and weighs just 17Kg). It is made from Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Plastic (CFRP).

eMagin unveiled the world's brightest full-color OLED microdisplays, the color OLED-XLS series. Those displays offer 1000 nits of luminance, that is four times brighter than "current industry standard".

XGA096 OLED-XL

eMagin are currently offering OLED-XLS displays in sample quantities over their entire product line (VGA, SVGA, XGA, SXGA and WUXGA). They will continue to produce the "older" OLED-XL displays.

Several companies announced new flexible OLED panels at SID 2013. None of the panels were demonstrated (except for Toshiba which showed the OLED but it was not powered). First up is Toshiba, which showed a 10.2" 1920x1200 (223 PPI) panel. Toshiba's OLED has an Oxide TFT backplane and uses the WRGB (white OLED with color filters) architecture.

Toshiba flexible OLED prototype

Panasonic developed a 4" flexible OLED with 224x224 resolution (only 80 PPI, direct emission). Panasonic used PEN as a substrate and the panel can be bent up to a curvature radius of 10 mm. This is also an Oxide-TFT panel. To produce it, Panasonic attached the PEN sheet to a glass substrate, deposited the OLED materials and then de-laminated the glass.

A few weeks ago we reported that AU Optronics developed a new 65" Oxide-TFT direct-emission OLED panel (the largest OLED panel ever made). Today at SID 2013 AUO discussed this new panel and unveiled the prototype:

AUO says that the panel is Full-HD in resolution, and it uses an "advanced" Oxide-TFT backplane. It was made in a Gen-6 production line which uses the largest Fine Metal Mask (FMM). AUO says that the uniformity of this panel is excellent. AUO also developed new pixel compensation driving technology which is employed in this panel. As can be expected from an OLED panel, AUO reports that their latest OLED features low power consumption, high picture quality, high contrast, high brightness, fast response time and free viewing angles.

LG Display unveiled a 5" plastic-based bendable flexible AMOLED panel at SID 2013. LG did not release any technical details. As far as we know this panel uses polyimide coated substrate and direct-emission RGB sub-pixels (as opposed to LG's OLED TV which use an WRGB technology - white OLEDs with color filters).

Earlier this month LG Electronics reiterated their plans to release a phone with a plastic based OLEDs by the end of 2013, and it seems that at SID the LG Display officials say this is still on track. LG Display is currently using their 4.5-Gen OLED fab in Paju to work on these flexible displays, which won't provide them with a a lot of capacity. LG Display may covert its 6.5-Gen LTPS line in Gumi to flexible OLED production, but that hasn't been decided yet.

According to reports from Korea, Samsung finally decided to stay with direct-emission (RGB architecture) in its upcoming OLED TV. Samsung's managed to increase the production yields in their pilot line to 60%, and this will be enough to launch their first OLED TVs in July 1st, 2013.

Samsung is also expected to start investing in an 8-Gen OLED TV line soon. This new line, as we said, will produce direct-emission OLEDs. According to earlier reports Samsung did consider using LG's WRGB architecture because it's easier to produce.

Digitimes reports that Samsung Electronics plans to launch their direct-emission 55" Full-HD OLED TV (the F9500) in Korea next month (June 2013). SDC still struggles with low yields, but they do plan to finally launch the TV in limited volume.

According to earlier reports, Samsung's OLED TV will cost about $18,000. That's a lot higher then LG's OLED, which costs $10,000 in Korea and $15,000 in the UK and in Israel (it will cost around $12,000 in the US, when it finally launches there).

Researchers from the Fraunhofer COMEDD Institute in collaboration with Von Ardenne Anlagentechnik are developing new direct-emission OLED microdisplays. These new displays will be more efficient and cheaper than Fraunhofer's current microdisplays which use color filters.

Fraunhofer uses Von Ardenne's flash-mask-transfer-lithography (FMTL) technology. The FMTL-technology works with special transfer masks. Organic layers are locally deposited through the masks via thermal heat input and transferred to the microdisplay. This process needed a complete redesign to suit OLED deposition.

LG officials say that LG Display aims to enter the small-sized OLED market with their new flexible OLED panels. The company reiterated their plans to start producing those in the second half of 2013. Some reports suggest that LG Electronics aims to ship the first flexible OLED equipped phone in Q4 2013.

LG/UDC flexible OLED panel prototype

LG also confirmed that the first flexible OLEDs will not really be flexible or bendable. They call this "unbreakable displays" as this will be the main benefit (these panels will also be lighter and thinner compared to regular OLEDs). But this is just the "first phase" towards real flexible displays.

Yoon Bu-hyun, LG Electronics's mobile business VP said that LG plans to launch a mobile phone that has an unbreakable flexible OLED display in Q4 2013. LG Display started working on these flexible OLEDs in late 2011 and they consider those displays to have a real value for the mobile solution (as opposed to glass based OLEDs which LG considers inferior to LCDs for mobile applications).

LG/UDC flexible OLED panel prototype

The last time we heard from LG Display regarding their flexible OLED was in January 2013. Back then the company said it was on track to start mass production of plastic based flexible OLEDs in H2 2013. The capacity will be "very limited" and they expect to be able to support just one or two customers. LG Display's flexible OLEDs will use polyimide coated substrate and direct-emission RGB sub-pixels (as opposed to LG's OLED TV which use white OLEDs with color filters).