Manufacturing equipment - Page 21

DuPont announced that it has signed a OLED production technology licensing agreement with a leading Asian AMOLED maker. This technology will be used to make large size OLED TV panels. We don't have any financial details on this agreement, but a leading asian AMOLED maker probably means Samsung, LG or Sony. In fact Bloomberg claims that the company is probably Samsung (which makes sense).

DuPont 4.3-inch printed OLED prototype

DuPont's nozzle-printing (or "spray-printing") technology uses a continuous stream of ink (unlike the droplets used in regular inkjet printing) to deposit OLED materials. This is a very fast process - DuPont says it can print a 50" TV in under 2 minutes, but the display isn't optimized in the sub-pixel level and is so less efficient than in other patterning technologies. But the faster throughput can lead to cheaper displays - in fact DuPont claims that this technology may make an OLED TV cheaper than an LCD TV.

Air Products announced a new contract with Samsung Mobile Display to supply gaseous nitrogen and oxygen, and liquid Argon to SMD's 5.5-Gen AMOLED fab. Air Products will build another air separation unit and pipeline at its Tanjeong, Korea site for gases supply to SMD's upcoming fab. Air Products will also build purification, filtering and monitoring systems.

This is Air Products's 2nd AMOLED gas contract with Samsung - the first one announced in December 2010.

Update: according to new reports, the OLED-A was wrong and Samsung are still using a Shadow-Mask to fabricate Super AMOLED HD displays

The OLED Association published a very interesting paper discussing Samsung's and LG Display's efforts to scale OLED production to large size panels (specifically 55" OLED TVs). In the article, they say that Samsung will use an LTPS substrate with a SMS (Small Mask Scanning) method, while LGD plans to use an Oxide TFT and Kodak's White OLED with color filters architecture. We already reported about Samsung's SMS method a few weeks ago.

The article includes a very interesting comparison of the different deposition methods (FMM, LITI, SMS, Printing and LG's RGBW). They also claim that the new display in the Samsung Galaxy II LTE HD was produced using LITI.

eMagin announced that SNU Precision shipped their new, proprietary OLED deposition machine. It is scheduled to arrive at eMagin’s production facility in Hopewell Junction, New York, in early November. eMagin signed the agreement to build this machine back in August 2010, and the original plan was to install it in Spring 2011 - so this is a delay of about half a year. The machine costed $4 million and replaces eMagin's existing Satella OLED deposition machine, an R&D tool adapted and used by eMagin for both R&D and production since the Company’s inception in 1996.

The new OLED deposition machine is expected to increase OLED microdisplay deposition capacity by approximately tenfold, to increase yield, and to contribute to a substantially more efficient, automated process with lower maintenance requirements and greater utilization.

A few weeks ago we posted MBraun movies showing some of their OLED Processing equipment (the UV_03 cleaner, the Vacuum Hotplate and the Convection Oven). Today MBraun released another set of three films. The first film shows their Slot Die Coater - which can be used in fabs from Gen-1 to Gen-4.5:

The second film is about the Edge Bead Remover (EBR):

MBraun released three nice videos showing their OLED processing equipment. The first one shows the UV-03 Cleaner - for the cleaning and activation of glass substrates or other optical surfaces using a simultaneous application of UV light and oxygen. This tool is used in both the coating and the encapsulation processes:

The second video shows the Vacuum Hotplate - used for both basic research and manufacturing. The combination of vacuum and heat transfer allows curing at modest conditions, addressing the sensitivity of organic materials to elevated temperatures:

Riber says they have signed a contract to deliver several hundred OLED effusion cells. This contract is worth several million euros. Riber says that this follows several significant orders achieved since mid 2010 and is used to develop smartphone displays - so we assume that the customer is Samsung, the only company producing OLED displays in that time, and this is used for AMOLED displays, not PMOLED ones.

Effusion cells are used in Vacuum Deposition, which is the method currently used by Samsung, LG Display and others to fabricate AMOLED displays.

The Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University (ASU) installed Sunic Systems' GEN-II OLED SUNICEL Plus 400 vacuum evaporation and encapsulation process tool. The FDC now has the ability to manufacture full color flexible OLEDs in-house - and the FDC says that they are already scaling the recently announced 3.8" AMOLED prototype (developed together with Universal Display, shown below) to larger sizes. The FDC purchased that system back in May 2010.

The FDC says that this new Gen II production system will enable the development of not only large-size flexible OLEDs but also solid-state lighting and plastic electronics.

There are reports that Jusung Engineering signed an agreement with the government of Morocco to develop OLED technology. It's not clear what the details exactly are, but Jusung says this could help them penetrate the European market. Perhaps they seek to actually open an OLED lighting fab there? We do not know yet.

An OLED lighting panel made by Jusung

Jusung is a Korean maker of semiconductor and display manufacturing equipment. The company announced in April 2011 that they were entering the OLED market - for both display and lighting. Jusung will offer a 'total solution' - from vacuum deposition to encapsulation. They also said they are seeking to establish a joint-venture outside of Korea to enter the worldwide OLED lighting market - so it seems that they have done that in Morocco now.

TCZ (a division of Cymer) announced a volume order for its TCZ-1500B, a new Gen-5.5 laser crystallization system, that can be used for LTPS LCD or OLED production. This order was received from a 'leading Asian flat panel manufacturer' - and is TCZ's fourth tool customer. The TCZ-1500B uses TCZ's patented laser crystallization technology (announced in May 2010).