Manufacturing equipment - Page 13

Japan's Dai Nippon Printing, the world's leader in evaporation mask (FMM) production, announced it will invest $54.6 million to triple its evaporation mask production capacity so it could meet the demand of the expanding OLED market.

According to the Nikkei Asian Review, DNP's market share in the evaporation mask market is over 50%. The company's expansion will be made in several stages, but should complete by 2020. DNP aims to reach $272 million in annual sales in 2020 (triple its current sales).

Japan's Screen Holdings (previously Dainippon Screen Mfg), a manufacturing equipment maker, announced that it started producing mass-production systems for OLED deposition - and began supplying these to display makers in April.

Screen Holdings is already making OLED deposition systems, but only R&D tools. The company finished the development of 6-Gen tools that can coat on polyimide substrate - for flexible OLED production.

During the company's financial conference call, Orbotech said that it has received new optical system bookings for two OLED fabs in two different countries - and it recently delivered a system to a third fab in a third country. The company says that this is a "clear evidence that OLED is increasing its penetration across the industry".

It's interested to hear Orbotech talk about three countries. It's highly likely that the first two countries are Korea and China, but the third country could either be Japan (for JOLED or JDI or perhaps Sharp/Foxconn) or it could be Taiwan (AU Optronics, most likely).

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.

Aixtron announced that it has reached an important milestone with its new OVPD demonstrator OLAD (Organic Large Area Demonstrator). After an internal test phase lasting several months and producing excellent results in some cases, the system is now available for initial customer tests.

Aixtron says that the OVPD technology (developed originally by Universal Display, and licensed exclusively to Aixtron) offers an optimized and efficient deposition with very short cycle times compared to conventional VTE systems - which should lead to drastically reduced OLED production costs.

Applied Materials' financial results for Q4 2015 were better than expected, and the company also issued a strong guidance going forward. In their display business segment, the company sees accelerated strategic investment from customers - particularly for OLED displays.

In 2015, the company's OLED system bookings reached $150 million. Applied traditionally offered backplane (LTPS and IGZO) deposition systems, and the company recently entered the OLED encapsulation market as well - which is seen as a growth driver for Applied.

According to a report from Korea, LG Display acquired an OLED CVD deposition system from Korea's Sunic System. The new Gen-6 system will be deployed at LGD's upcoming E5 flexible OLED fab in Gumi.

Interestingly, the Korean report says that LGD's first choice for OLED deposition system was Cannon-Tokki, but the Japanese company could not supply the system in time as it has a "rush of orders" from Samsung Display. LGD is hurrying to build the new fab as they aim to start production in the first half of 2017.

The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) is a UK based R&D institute that helps companies develop and scale manufacturing processes. The CPI, in collaboration with Heidelberg Instruments have developed a new high-resolution high-speed roll-to-roll (R2R) digital lithography tool for the manufacture of flexible organic thin film transistors (OTFTs).

The machine is already installed at the CPI's National Printable Electronics Facility in County Durham, UK. The new tool provides the ability to continuously manufacture OTFTs directly onto rolls of plastic film at rates approaching 0.1 m²/min.

Photonics-based solutions provider Coherent announced their financial results for Q4 2015, which were below estimates, but the company reported high bookings, mostly for its Linebeam systems which are used for laser annealing (turning a-Si into LTPS) for OLED producers.

Last quarter Coherent reported that they shipped their third $20-million Linebeam 1500 OLED ELA system in the quarter. Back then Coherent expected substantial new OLED orders in 2016 and now they confirm that. Coherent reports that they received a large (well in excess of $150 million) for OLED systems - and they have a "significant number" of orders pending for the balance of the second quarter and for the remainder of fiscal 2016. Deliveries of the new systems will begin in June 2016 and will run through 2017.

Colnatec just told us that a large European customer is building an OLED deposition machine that is headed for China. The machine will adopt Colnatec's temperature-controlled Tempe system.

Colnatec would not reveal much, besides that the substrate size is "larger than anything currently on the market", and the customer ordered a "large number" of Tempe Systems. This is very interesting news, and hopefully we will know more in the future. If this is indeed the largest substrate-size OLED fab ever, it is bound to produce OLED TV panels, and it will be great to finally see competition for LG Display's OLEDs. Of course it may take a couple of years before mass production actually begins.