Manufacturing equipment - Page 15

Germany-based AIXTRON is a leading deposition equipment provider for the semiconductor industries - used for a wide range of applications, from LED to graphene deposition. For the OLED market, Aixtron is offering Organic Vapor Phase Deposition (OVPD) equipment (which was exclusively licensed to AIXTRON by Universal Display).

Juergen Kreis, AIXTRON's Director Business Development, was kind enough to update us on Aixtron's OLED business and answer a few questions we had on the company's technology. Juergen joined AIXTRON in 2010 as Director Business Development with special focus on the portfolio for organic material deposition solutions.

Q: Hello Juergen. Can you give us a short introduction to AIXTRON's OLED related products and services?

AIXTRON’s core expertise clearly is in the offering of proprietary process solutions for the deposition of organic thin-films, with OVPD (Organic Vapor Phase Deposition) and PVPD (Polymer Vapor Phase Deposition) being the core process technologies. As the fabrication of organic electronics requires many manufacturing steps, flawless integration of the respective processes into an automated material flow is essential.

OTI Lumionics unveiled their first OLED lighting product, the Aerelight desk lamp. It uses a single OLED lighting panel and is relatively affordable at $239 (I said relatively!). OTI did not reveal the technical details - but they did say it offers a brightness of up to 1,000 lux at maximum brightness. The lamp will ship in early 2015.

OTI was established in 2011 by researchers and engineers from the University of Toronto, with an aim to develop OLED lighting technologies. The company developed new OLED materials (electrode materials and transparent conductors) and also a new production process aimed towards low-cost production. It's interesting to see a startup company trying to develop materials, process technology and applications all at the same time - so I talked to the company's CEO, Michael Helander, and he explained the company's technology and business goals.

UBI Research released a new AMOLED manufacturing equipment market forecast report, in which they estimate that the total market size ill be about 36 trillion Won (about $35 billion) from 2015-2020.

In terms of machines, the largest market share (30%) will be taken by steppers, following by evaporators (17%). If we look at display components, 69% of the manufacturing equipment sales will go to backplane machines, following by evaporation deposition machines (17%) and encapsulation machines (14%).

Back in January 2014 Aixtron and Manz announced they will co-develop solutions for efficient OLED production, based on Aixtron's OVPD technology - specifically a Gen-8 (2300x2500 mm) system. During a recent conference call, Aixtron said that the Gen-8 tool is still in qualification and it seems that it will take some time before this is ready to commercialization. Aixtron is however "very optimistic" regarding the business aspects of OVPD.

Aixtron recently installed an R&D "cluster" at their clean-room that demonstrates the core processes used to produce organic semiconductors (deposition of OLEDs and flexible electronics). The Gen-1 (200x200 mm) cluster is built around three OVPD systems embedded in an automated cluster environment.

MKS Instruments (a provider of instruments and solutions for advanced manufacturing processes) reported their financial results, and during the conference call the company said that a large Chinese display maker placed a multisystem order for a Liquizon cleaning subsystem. The Chinese company will use this system for their upcoming AMOLED production fab.

It's great to hear confirmation of at least one Chinese AMOLED fab. We know of several companies from China with plans to launch an AMOLED fab, including Everdisplay, BOE and CSOT. While Everdisplay hopes to be the first one to mass produce OLEDs in Chinese, it is a new company, so MKS would not have described it as a "large Chinese display maker". It's more likely that this order came from BOE.

OLEDNet posted an article stating that major equipment companies in Korea reported orders from Samsung Display (SDC). The manufacturing process equipment suggest that SDC is finally moving forward with its Gen-6 (1850x1500) AMOLED fab.

According to the report, SDC plans to complete the orders soon and wants to get it all by December 2014 and start mass producing in Q1 2015. The only major equipment orders left are for the encapsulation equipment. These may go to Veeco for their FAST-ALD systems, but we know that SDC is also looking at alternative approaches.

In September 2013, Applied Materials and Tokyo Electron (TEL) announced that the two semiconductor manufacturing equipment makers will merge. Today the two companies announced that the new company name will be Eteris, and they also revealed the new logo. The companies expect the transaction to close in second half of 2014.

Both Applied and TEL are engaged with OLED manufacturing equipment. Applied Materials is offering two film deposition systems suitable for LTPS or Oxide-TFT backplane deposition (for both LCD and OLEDs panels). The AKT-PX-PECVD system (shown below) is used to deposit LTPS films on large glass substrates (sized from 1.6 m² to 5.7 m²), while the AKT-PiVoT PVD system is used to deposit metal oxide-based TFTs (IGZO in particular).

US-based OLED inkjet startup Kateeva announced that it is expanding its facilities to create a dedicated manufacturing space - to build YIELDjet OLED ink-jet printing systems. The company aims to deploy YIELDjet systems in the "near future". The company also hired a new senior VP for customer satisfaction.

After years of development, Kateeva finally unveiled their OLED inkjet systems in November 2013. During the unveiling, we discussed Kateeva's technology and business with Dr. Conor Madigan, the company's President and Co-founder.

Switzerland based Fluxim, providing leading simulation and measurement technology to the OLED and solar cell industry, announces two product releases and two training events. Following is a sponsored message from Fluxim.

Fluxim is Launching SETFOS 4.0 with a New Light Scattering Module for Assessing the OLED Light Outcoupling Enhancement

After extended development and testing effort, Fluxim is going to release a new module of the simulator SETFOS in the beginning of June 2014 to simulate light scattering in OLEDs and solar cells. Fluxim believes that their customers can strongly take advantage from this major improvement as the new module makes it easy to quantify the impact of light outcoupling enhancement structures. Please write to info@fluxim.com to obtain further information today.

In September 2013, Veeco acquired Synos Technology for $185 million for the company's FAST-ALD flexible OLED encapsulation technology. Veeco later received a purchase order from SDC for a first-generation FAST-ALD prototype system. Veeco expected a manufacturing ramp to begin in 2014 - hoping to book more than $75 in ALD production systems by the end of the year.

Yesterday Veeco reported their financial results for Q1 2014. While the company had a good quarter (revenues of $91 million, up 24% sequentially) the new OLED business did not perform as good as they expected. In fact, they didn't get the orders they thought they'd get in Q1 2014, which meant that Veeco will pay less for Synos - $25 million less, actually.