LTPS - Page 4

AP Systems announced that it has received orders for OLED deposition equipment from CSoT for the company's 6-Gen flexible AMOLED fab in Wuhan that is currently under construction.

AP Systems said that the whole order is worth $60.65 million and the equipment will be delivered starting in September 2017 until October 2018. AP Systems did not disclose the equipment list, but the company's main products are laser annealing equipment (used to produce LTPS substrates), laser list-off equipment and OLED encapsulation tools.

TianMa Micro-Electronics announced that its 6-Gen LTPS AMOLED fab in Wuhan, China, is now starting to produce panels. This is the first 6-Gen AMOLED line in China to enter production. The new fab will produce both rigid and flexible OLEDs.

AMOLED panel produced at TianMa 6-Gen fab, Wuhan

According to reports TianMa is focusing on VR and AR devices, wearable devices and foldable devices. Last month TianMa demonstrated three OLED panels - a 5.5" FHD panel, a 5-inch FHD panel and a flexible 5.46" panel, so it's likely that the smartphone market is also in focus.

According to reports from Korea, Samsung has started construction of a new flexible OLED fab, which will be called the A4 line. This will be Samsung's first Gen-7 line as the company is aiming to expand its technology gap over its upcoming OLED competitors who are all building Gen-6 line.

A Gen-7 line substrate is 1870x2200 mm in size - as opposed to 1500x1800 mm for Gen-6. This means that you can produce more displays per substrate and price per screen is lower. Scaling up evaporation OLED production is not so easy, but it seems that Samsung managed to solve its technologies hurdles - mainly the FMM metal masks and the LTPS annealing process.

Digitimes reports that TCL-subsidiary China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSoT) has decided to construct a 6-Gen LTPS flexible AMOLED production line in Wuhan, China, in a $5.08 billion investment.

The new fab will have a monthly capacity of 45,000 substrates and will start trial production of small to medium sized flexible OLEDs in Q2 2019.

JOLED (Japan OLED) was established in August 2014 by Japan Display, Sony and Panasonic with an aim to become an OLED medium display (10-30 inch) producer. The company is aiming to start mass production in 2019, although some panels may ship in limited volume earlier.

Last week at Cebit 2017 JOLED demonstrated some of its latest OLED prototypes. In the photo above you can see JOLED's 21.6" 4K (3840x2160, 204 PPI) "medical applications" monitor. JOLED also demonstrated what seems to be the same panel for "consumer" application (they call this private viewing). The whole panel weighs just 500 grams and the color gamut is 130% sRGB.

According to a story on iTers News, Tianma is planning to construct a 6-Gen AMOLED fab in Xiamen, China. The fab's capacity will be 30,000 monthly substrates.

The origin of this story is from LG Electronics' whose PRI research institute won a bid to supply ELA LTPS laser equipment to Tianma's upcoming fab.

DisplayMate posted a comprehensive review of the iPhone 7 display. The iPhone 7 has a 4.7" 1334 x 750 IPS LTPS LCD display, which DisplayMate say is truly impressive - and is the top performing mobile LCD display ever tested.

The iPhone 7's LCD also breaks several display records - including the highest absolute color accuracy, the most accurate image contrast and intensity scale, highest peak brightness for an average picture level and the lowest screen reflectance .

After years of OLED R&D but no actual reports, Taiwan's Innolux is finally demonstrating its new OLED prototypes, signalling that the company is finally about to re-enter the OLED market. Innolux says that it has recently "achieved success with AMOLED technology" and now plans to continue development and ultimately mass produce AMOLED panels.

In a trade-show in Taiwan, Innolux is demonstrating several OLED prototypes. First up we have a 5.5" WQHD (2560x1440, 534 PPI) flexible AMOLED built on a plastic substrate and an LTPS backplane. The panel has a "proprietary pixel rendering methods" (perhaps PenTile like?) and uses thin-film encapsulation and is produced using an FMM mask (more on this below).

Photonics-based solutions provider Coherent reported its financial results for CYQ2 2016. Coherent received over $240 million in flat-panel display related orders, including a single order for systems in excess of $100 million. Most of these FPD orders are tied to flexible OLED production.

Coherent also said it starts to see orders for other process steps in OLED production, including Short-Pulse Lasers for film cutting and excimer lasers for Laser-Lift-Off.

In January 2016 Photonics-based solutions provider Coherent announced large (well in excess of $150 million) orders for its Linebeam systems which are used for laser annealing (turning a-Si into LTPS) for OLED producers. Coherent also said it has a significant number of orders pending for the remainder of 2016.

In the company's latest conference call, Coherent announced that the recent OLED capacity expansions generated more than $300 million of orders for Linebeam 1000, Linebeam 1500, and UV Blade systems in Q2 2016. The UV Blade is used for laser lift-off in flexible OLEDs. These systems will be delivered to end customers in South Korea, Japan and China.