Manufacturing equipment - Page 2

In May 2022 we reported that China-based OLED lighting developer Yeolight Technology is starting to build a 4.5-Gen OLED lighting production line, in Huaibei City, Anhui Province, China. The company is now starting to move in and install the first production equipment. The total equipment cost is estimated at 800 million Yuan (about $111 million USD). 

Yeolight says that the new fab, when complete, will have a capacity of around 7 million panels in a year, or 1.2 million automotive lighting modules (probably referring to rear light modules). This will be the world's largest OLED lighting fab, when complete.

Notion Systems, a leader in ink jet printing for industrial applications, has been active in the display market for a long time. The company is now promoting its EHD technology for high precision printing. Here’s an interview we conducted with Antonio Schmidt – SVP Sales & Business Development and Jochen Seeser – Senior Process Development Manager, Notion Systems.

Hello Antonio and Jochen, thank you for your time. In 2022, you started offering EHD printing systems. Can you explain how this technology works and what applications does it enable in the display industry?

Notion Systems has been active in the display market since 2016, when we delivered an n.jet display for pixel printing to a lab of a leading display manufacturer in China. Since then, we have supplied several inkjet displays for RGB printing and encapsulation to various R&D and production sites in China and Taiwan. I think we can also claim that we are the only manufacturer, along with perhaps one other U.S. competitor, that has multiple systems in operation for 24x7 display production.

OLED microdisplay developer Seeya Information Technology has ordered OLED deposition (evaporation) equipment from Korea's Sunic System, in a deal worth $25.15 million.

Sunic Systems will provide Seeya with 12-inch (300 mm) OLED deposition tools. Sunic is developing direct-patterning deposition equipment, but it is not clear whether this order is for such tools or whether these will be the standard white OLED with color filter deposition.

Industrial laser developer Coherent announced a new Monaco industrial ultraviolet (UV) femtosecond laser with 50 W of output power. The company says that the new laser, the first 50 W 400 fs UV laser with proven 24/7 industrial-grade performance, is ideal for high-speed, high-volume cutting of stacked-OLED displays. 

This laser is used to cut the OLED displays after they are fully produced, which is why Coherent uses the term stacked-OLED (it does not refer to an OLED display with a stacked - or tandem - emitter design). The laser cutting enables shapes, notches and holes. Coherent updates that it installed over 800 Monaco laser systems worldwide (not all at OLED display fabs, though, the Monaco systems are also used in other applications).

Universal Display announced that it will detail advances in its latest PHOLED materials at Display Week 2023. The company's latest red, green, and blue PHOLED materials offer a narrow emission spectrum, which increases the efficiency of OLED devices, in addition to enhancing the color gamut.

UDC also unveil a new OVJP system printed on a 200mm x 500mm Corning Astra Glass substrate. UDC will also showcase the first-ever fully printed seven-layer (HIL/HTL/EBL/EML/HBL/ETL/EIL), 80 PPI, green commercial-level PHOLED device fabricated by its R&D OVJP system that has comparable device performance with vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE). 

The trade war between the US and China escalates, an the US is mostly focused on restricting semiconductor equipment, materials and chips sales to China as its sees semiconductors as a crucial strategic technology.

According to new reports, the US is now considering adding display technologies, mostly OLEDs, to the list of restricted technologies and may ask Japan and Korea to stop selling materials and equipment to Chinese display makers. 

The following is a sponsored article by Coherent

It’s well known that laser technology is critical for making OLED displays. In particular, the use of excimer laser annealing (ELA) to transform the amorphous silicon deposited on the display mother glass into polycrystalline silicon is essential for proper device performance.

But lasers are used at many other key steps in the production process. Several of these involve high precision cutting. The figure identifies two of these. The first is FlexOLED shape and hole cutting. The second is coverglass and window cutting.

Coherent has launched a new Monaco infrared industrial femtosecond laser configuration with 150 W of output power. The company says that the new laser is ideal for cutting of large OLED display glass.

The OLED industry is now entering the IT display market (tablets, laptops and monitors) and this accelerates the demand for laser tools with higher output power that can process larger glass sheets than those currently used in smartphones and wearables. Coherent says that the new Monaco 1035-150-150 outputs more than double the power and pulse energy of existing configurations, enabling high-precision cutting of large glass panels in very high volumes to produce large OLED screens with perfect assembly fit in next-generation IT devices. Coherent says that its new laser is the smallest femtosecond laser of its kind on the market and the easiest to integrate into laser tools.

In the past year or so, much have been said about Samsung's plans to build a 8-Gen OLED IT production line, as the company wants to expand its capacity for monitors, laptops and tablet OLED displays.

Samsung plan for a full-cut 8-Gen line

As this is the first such production line, SDC had two ongoing R&D projects: one with Ulvac, that used full-cut vertical OLED deposition, and another with Canon Tokki, that used half-cut horizontal deposition. According to the latest reports from Korea, SDC decided to prioritize the Canon Tokki half-cut project, as the technology is more mature and is more likely to finish as per Apple's roadmap.