Manufacturing equipment - Page 23

Air Products announced that they have been selected to supply gaseous nitrogen, oxygen and argon to Samsung Mobile Display's (SMD) upcoming Gen-5.5 AMOLED plant plant in Tanjeong, Korea. Air Products will build a new air separation unit (ASU) and pipeline at its Tanjeong site for gases supply to SMD. Air Products is also supplying gases to SMD's two TFT-LCD plants in Cheonan.

Samsung 5.5-Gen AMOLED plant is scheduled to start production in July 2011. This should increase Samsung's AMOLED panel capacity tenfold...

Tokyo Electron (TEL) and Seiko Epson will jointly-develop OLED display manufacturing technology. This project will integrate Epson's inkjet printing method and TEL's production equipment. The aim is to create next-generation OLED manufacturing technologies as a total-solution-package.

Espon 14-inch Inkjet processed OLED

Back in 2009, we posted an interview with Satoru Miyashita, General Manager of Seiko Epson's Core Technology Development. Back then, Satoru estimated that by 2012 we'll see inkjet-printed OLED TVs.

AUO started to install equipment in its upcoming AMOLED production line, and they expect to begin mass production in 2Q 2011.

AUO 14-inch OLED prototype

AUO announced that they will begin installing equipment in 3Q 2010 back in March. AUO plans to produce small- to medium-size displays

Philips and the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) will co-develop a new process for OLED production - which aims to make OLEDs bigger and cheaper. The idea is to use a mask with micrometer slits on the surface of the ITO electrode, and then deposit a thin-film of aluminum (or copper or sliver) metal. A laser is finally used to melt the metal - unto the slits in the mask. The result - very fine and thin conductor paths (up to 40 micrometers).

Thin conductor on glass

The Fraunhofer say that this has already been achieved in the lab, and the next stage is to commercialize this together with Philips. The process might be ready within two or three years.

MBraun is selling OLED production tools to display makers (including LG and Samsung) - and they say that recent orders suggest that these companies plan to make OLED TVs, and will be ready to do so by 2011.

According to MBraun, making OLED TVs (up to 42") using their current equipment is possible. The solutions needed for the scale up from smaller displays "have been found".

Canon announced today that they will acquire Tokki Corporation- and make it a wholly owned subsidiary. Tokki plans to foster and expand the OLED and solar-battery manufacturing equipment business.

Tokki has developed their first OLED mass-production system back in 1999. In March 2007 we have interviewed Tokki's overseas sales manager.

Samsung Mobile Display says they began construction of their new 5.5-Gen AMOLED plant. The new plant will start production in July 2011. The new plant will have a monthly capacity of 30 million 3" displays.

Samsung will invest $2.2 billion on the new plant, that will have 3 lines (1300X1500mm). It's possible that Samsung plans to use the plant for OLED TV panels, and not just small mobile displays.

TMZ, a supplier of OLED manufacturing technology claims that China is investing heavily in OLEDs - they want to challenge South-Korea.

TMZ is a joint-venture between Cymer and Carl-Zeiss, selling lasers for OLED manufacturing. They have already installed one system in Korea, and plan to deliver the 2nd system to a Chinese company soon.

Cymber says they are beginning to roll out lasers for OLED manufacturing, through their TCZ display division. They have already installed their first system in an unnamed customer in South Korea (probably Samsung Mobile Display. If all goes as planned, consumers could see the first OLED displays made with TCZ tools in time for Christmas), and it plans to deliver the 2nd one in another unnamed customer in China by the end of October.

One of the key innovations underlying TCZ’s OLED technology is a process that creates a uniform grid of transistors on the semiconducting material that forms a thin-film base layer on a screen’s backplane, or control layer. Each transistor in the grid controls a light-emitting diode, and each LED illuminates a single pixel. Another key innovation involves depositing one of three proprietary organic compounds precisely atop each LED to make a red, green, or blue pixel.

OLEDNet has posted an interesting article talking about OLED production yields in evaporating deposition equipments. They say that current TFT-LCD production processes take around a minute to complete, while AMOLED processes take around 4 minutes. Both Samsung and LG are developing new ways to make this faster (Samsung is developing a vertical evaporating deposition system, while LG is working on a horizontal one). But even those new methods will still take around 2 minutes.

White-OLED panel, Fraunhofer

OLEDNet suggests using a white OLED with a color filter. White OLED can reduce the evaporating deposition time to one minute in In-line evaporating deposition method because it could produce the light emitting floor using RGB and other parts in only one sheet of shadow mask.

There are two major problems with this approach. First of all, white AMOLED materials aren't ready for this yet (but they will be soon). Second, you lose color quality. But OLEDNet claims that such displays will still be better than TFT-LCDs in terms of contrast. OLEDNet concludes that developing white OLED materials should be the core technology for the future of AMOLED displays.