FMM - Page 7

The Korean police announced today that they are investigating a case of key technology leaking from Samsung Mobile Display to a local rival firm. This technology is Samsung's Small Mask Scanning, used to produce AMOLED on large substrates. The local rival may be LG Display (Samsung's biggest AMOLED competitor) but this is strange as they are using a completely different front plane architecture (WOLED-CF) in their own large panel production and this technology does not require fine patterning.

11 people were arrested in the case - former and current researchers at SMD and employees of the rival firm. The main suspect is a 46 years old former researcher at SMD who now works at the rival company. The police suspects he received 190 million Won (about $168,000) for the secret data. He is also suspect of sharing the information with a Chinese display maker.

AU Optronics announced their financial results for 4Q 2011, with a record loss of $21 NT billion (almost $700 million USD). AUO is hoping to return to profitability - mostly because of growth in demand for LCD TVs in emerging markets such as India, Indonesia and Brazil. Regarding AUO's OLED program, the company re-iterated plans to mass produce AMOLED panels for mobile phone in this quarter (a little sooner then expected, actually), and more interestingly they said they plan to unveil OLED TV panel samples by the end of 2012.

AUO already unveiled a 32" OLED TV prototype back in November 2011, but they probably want to unveil larger panels towards the end of the year - and ones that are closer to mass production. The 32" prototype AUO shows had a Oxide-TFT (IGZO) backplane and was fabricated using vapor deposition using a metal mask. The panel featured Full-HD (1920x1080) resolution, 100,000:1 contrast ration, 0.01ms response time and brightness of 200cd/m².

There's an interesting article discussing a team of engineers in Samsung which developed the Super AMOLED HD displays. As was suggested before, Samsung is still using a Shadow Mask (or FMM) to fabricate Super AMOLED HD displays. Using new materials and a new manufacturing process they managed to develop such a fine mask that enabled over 300ppi - a thing that was considered impossible by several companies.

So Samsung didn't move to LITI production yet, and they are still using FMM. Samsung also developed a new technique called Small Mask Scanning (or SMS) will enables them to scale up AMOLED production to 8-Gen plants.

Last week we reported that AUO is showing a new Oxide-TFT based 32" OLED TV, and today we have some new details. Unsurprisingly, the Oxide-TFT is IGZO based and the TV uses a bottom-emission type OLED. AUO is using vapor deposition using a metal mask.

The OLED TV features Full-HD (1920x1080) resolution, 100,000:1 contrast ration, 0.01ms response time and brightness of 200cd/m².

Update: according to new reports, the OLED-A was wrong and Samsung are still using a Shadow-Mask to fabricate Super AMOLED HD displays

The OLED Association published a very interesting paper discussing Samsung's and LG Display's efforts to scale OLED production to large size panels (specifically 55" OLED TVs). In the article, they say that Samsung will use an LTPS substrate with a SMS (Small Mask Scanning) method, while LGD plans to use an Oxide TFT and Kodak's White OLED with color filters architecture. We already reported about Samsung's SMS method a few weeks ago.

The article includes a very interesting comparison of the different deposition methods (FMM, LITI, SMS, Printing and LG's RGBW). They also claim that the new display in the Samsung Galaxy II LTE HD was produced using LITI.

There's an interesting report that both Samsung and LG have recently produced prototype 55" OLED TV panels. These panels will be unveiled in the FPD International 2011 exhibition in Japan next month.

According to the report, Samsung has produced the 55" panel in their 5.5-Gen line using Small Mask Scanning technology (SMS, which replaces Fine Metal Mask, or FMM). As was previously reported, LG is using white OLED with color filters to produce their large panels. Both companies are satisfied with the panels' quality, power consumption and lifetime.

I just had an interesting talk with two industry insiders (one of them is a Samsung supplier) - about Samsung's upcoming Super AMOLED HD display. It turns out that these displays are indeed real - and will be unveiled soon. We can expect 5" to 6" smartphones in fall 2011 (the first will probably be the GT-I9220 with a 5.3" display) and 7" tablets by the end of 2011.

A 7-inch Super AMOLED prototype

According to my sources, Samsung managed to achieve HD resolution on these small displays by using PenTile matrix again (like in the original Super AMOLED displays). They have also developed a new manufacturing process and are using new materials. It might be that they have finally started to use Universal Display's green PHOLED (we reported that Samsung is using a green phosphorescent in their new 5.5-Gen plant, but perhaps they will only start using it in the HD displays).

There are rumors that Samsung is set to release a new Galaxy S II variant (code named Celox) with LTE. The interesting bit is that it is said that this phone will sport Samsung's new Super AMOLED HD display rather than the Super AMOLED Plus used in regular S II phones - and that Super AMOLED HD will use PenTile matrix again.

Galaxy S II

So if Samsung goes back to PenTile, this might explain the resolution increase, although it will still be unrealistic to expect an HD (1280x800) resolution on a 4" display - even with PenTile, as Samsung will not be able to move beyond 200ppi using their current FMM technology. In any case, it seems rather unlikely for Samsung to go back to this technology after telling us that normal matrix is better in Super AMOLED Plus displays...

Samsung Mobile Display started producing AMOLED panels in their new 5.5-Gen (1,300x1,500mm) fab in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, South Korea. This is actually two months ahead of schedule. The official celebration will take place next month.

Samsung 5.5-gen fab groundbreaking ceremony

This is just the first line in Samsung's new fab - which will produce 24,000 substrates a month. The next stage (line 2) is scheduled for the end of 2011 (and will double the capacity to 48,000 monthly substrates). The third line is planned for the first half of 2012, and this will bring monthly capacity to 100,000 substrates. Total investment for this new fab is around $2.2 billion.

We've got new details about the resolution of Samsung's Super AMOLED Plus. Super AMOLED Plus drops the PenTile matrix used in Samsung's previous generation AMOLEDs, and so have 50% sub pixels (see explanation here). This causes it to be clearer, but actually each pixel is a bit larger and so a 4.3" Super AMOLED Plus display features the same resolution as a 4" Super AMOLED.

But we were also told that Samsung will produce Super AMOLED Plus at higher resolutions - and achieve over 300ppi. Today we learned that Samsung plans to move from Fine-Metal-Mask (FMM) technology to laser-induced thermal imaging (LITI). This will enable them to achieve much higher resolutions. We do not know when they plan to actually start using LITI, but when they do they'll be able to produce displays with much higher resolutions (on par with Apple's Retina-Display).