Manufacturing equipment - Page 11

IHS says that the OLED industry is now entering a huge capacity-growth phase, and IHS estimates that the AMOLED production equipment market will reach $9.5 billion in revenues in 2017.

Almost half of that amount will go to TFT backplane equipment ($4.4 billion in 2017), while the organic layer deposition market will reach 2.2 billion and the encapsulation tools market will reach $1.2 billion. IHS estimates that Canon Tokki is the leader in OLED deposition equipment, and has a market share of over 50%.

ALD equipment maker Encapsulix announced that a leading Asian AMOLED manufacturer has chosen its ALD-TFE deposition systems, to be used as flexible AMOLED encapsulation. The first tool is already under construction and will start operating in the spring of 2017.

Encapsulix says that the order was awarded following an extensive evaluation of available ALD platforms, and this confirms the technological superiority and leading cost-of-ownership of the company's ALD-TFE equipment.

Meyer Burger announced that it has shipped a CONx TFE OLED thin film encapsulation system to an Asian customer. This system includes two deposition technologies, inkjet printing and PECVD to offer a complete encapsulation solution for flexible OLEDS.

The CONx TFE system compreses of Meyer Burger's proprietary remote plasma PECVD for inorganic coating and its PiXDRO inkjet printing technology for the deposition of accurately positioned and homogeneous organic layers. Meyer Burger says that the system provides excellent water and oxygen barrier properties without compromising the optical transparency of the encapsulation layer all the while operating at low temperatures and low ion bombardment.

Korean manufacturing equipment maker SFA Engineering announced that it secured a $93.5 million order from China's Visionox. SFA will deliver the equipment by August 2017.

Visionox has started mass producing AMOLED panels in June 2015, but the company's production capacity is still limited. Visionox's Gen-5.5 AMOLED line in Kunshan can currently produce around 4,000 monthly substrate, and once yields stabilize they will reach a full capacity of 15,000 monthly substrates. The company is mulling a $673 million investment to expand the capacity of this fab.

A few months ago we reported that China-based AMOLED producer Everdisplay is planning to invest $4.1 billion USD to build a 6-Gen AMOLED factory. Today the company launched this new AMOLED fab officially in a ceremony in Shanghai, China.

On December 9th Everdisplay started constructing the new fab in the Jinshan Industrial Zone in Shanghai. Investment in the new fab, according to EverDisplay, will actually be 27.2 billion yuan - or almost $4 billion USD. The fab will be able to produce 30,000 monthly substrates (1500 x 1850 mm) and will be used to produce small and medium sized flexible AMOLEDs (1 to 15 inch).

Market analysts from Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) estimate that the market for OLED deposition equipment will reach new heights in Q4 2016 and Q1 2017, followed by even more expanded spending in Q3 2017.

The OLED deposition (evaporation + printing) equipment spending will exceed $2.5 billion on 2017 - rising over 100% from 2016.

Update: It turns out that this specific $61 million deal is not for an OLED fab, but for BOE Display's upcoming Gen-10.5 LCD fab.

Israel-based inspection solutions provider Orbotech announced it signed an agreement to supply inspection and testing solutions for China's BOE Display upcoming OLED TV fab. The deal is estimated at $61 million, and is Orbotech's largest deal in China so far.

Those inspection systems will be deployed at BOE Display's upcoming 8.5-Gen pilot line in Hefei. According to earlier reports, this fab will produce WRGB OLEDs on an IGZO backplane. According to Orbotec, the facility will produce 90,000 TV panels per month in 2019, and when it reacehs full-scale production it will have a capacity of 120,000 screens. Orbotech will start delivering machines in the first half of 2017.

Sunic System recently unveiled a new evaporation-FMM based AMOLED system that enables high resolution deposition - Sunic says it will enable PPI up to 2,250 PPI. Sunic's new technology makes use of a plane source for evaporating OLED materials, as opposed to the currently-used linear source. Such high resolution displays will be very useful for VR applications.

Sunic System now announced that it succeeded in implementing 1.1um shadow distance by using the new plane source evaporation and 100um shadow mask. Such a small shadow distance can achieve 1,000 to 1,500 PPI resolutions. The company's next step is to lower shadow distance to 0.37um - which will indeed enable 2,250 PPI and 11K high-resolution mobile AMOLEDs.

Applied Materials introduced a new high-resolution inline e-beam review (EBR) system that combines a scanning electron microscope (SEM) capabilities used in semiconductor device review with a large-scale display vacuum platform, resulting in an inline EBR technology that the company says is the fastest and most effective of its kind.

The new system is suitable for both LCD and OLED manufacturing. The company says that next-gen applications such as VR and AR require high quality displays and production of such displays can be enhanced using the new system. Applied already received orders from six of the top ten largest display manufacturers in the world for the new system.

Korea equipment maker DAWONSIS developed a new OLED deposition process that is based on FMM but according to the company can be scalable to large-area deposition. This could theoretically enable efficient evaporation-based OLED TV production.

The so-called Joule Heating Deposition process use a large area material source (as opposed to point-sources or line-sources currently used) using a conductive film that is efficiency heated using voltage induction. According to DAWONSIS this process is scalable and also efficient in terms of material usage (which is about 70%-80%).