Manufacturing equipment - Page 24

A few days ago, DuPont has unveiled new printable OLED materials. DuPont now say that they can print a 50" OLED TV in under two minutes. They are using a custom-made printer from Dai Nippon Screen Manufacturing Co.

Dupont worked with Dai Nippon Screen to develop a multi-nozzle printer for the new inks. The Dai Nippon printer generates a continuous stream of ink, rather than droplets, and moves over a surface at rates of four to five meters per second while patterning a display.

Advantech announced today that they have completed their $14 million financing round (from the Pan family and Shanghai Ventures - announced back in July 2009). The investment will be used to build an inline TFT production line using Advantec’s patented shadow mask deposition process. Advantech says that their technology can be used to produce an OLED TV for a similar or lower cost than an LCD TV!

Advantech 4-inch AMOLED panel

Advantech plans to start selling and licensing its active-matrix TFT backplanes and production lines to TV and e-paper manufacturers worldwide as early as 2011. The lines are used to produce OLED or e-paper backplanes, at "exceptionally low cost". The production line is also less wasteful (and so more environmentally friendly). They say that it'll reduce factory investment requirements of manufacturers by up to 90%.

Korea's Government will invest 30 billion won ($26.8 million) in a 4th-generation (730-920 millimeter glass) in-line deposit system manufacturing process for white OLEDs. The government will invest $17 million, the rest will come from private companies. R&D will focus on making the equipment needed to mass produce the panels, improve the process yield and train around 350 qualified workers.

ModisTech Flexible OLED Light prototype

Korea hopes to have the first Gen-4 plant, and the plan is to start commercial sales in 2013. These will be indirect lighting products. Direct lighting will hit the market at around 2015.

Update: Samsung's current fab is actually a Gen 4 one, and not a Gen 3.5 like we reported earlier. The LTPS portion is a full Gen 4 (730x920). The VTE portion is actually ½ Gen 4, 730x460, but the equipment capacity is balanced to the Gen 4. Thanks Barry!

Samsung has apparently committed the investment needed for a new Gen 5.5 (1300X1500mm) OLED plant. They will start installing equipment in 3Q 2010, and the plant will go online in full capacity in January 2011. According to the article, they still plan to make small OLEDs for mobile devices in the new plant, but we wonder whether this one will be used for larger panels, like those required by Apple's upcoming 2nd-Gen iPad?

Samsung are currently fulfilling 80% of the OLED orders they have, and they are using a Gen 4 plant (they recently increased the capacity of that plant).

InnoPhysics has performed successful feasibility studies at the Holst Centre, and now is ready to go to market with its proprietary Digital-on-Demand PlasmaPrint hardware solution. They say that their technology enables software patterned surface functionalization, etching and deposition of functional coatings on thin (plastic) substrates.

Plasma-printed OLED lighting test structures

The proprietary InnoPhysics technology solution operates on a large variety of plastic substrates in ambient conditions, at room temperature and it provides flexibility in patterning, i.e. mask-less. As part of the go-to-market strategy, InnoPhysics is developing a PlasmaPrint toolkit integratable with existing table-top R&D print platforms.

AU Optronics is on track to start mass-producing small and medium AMOLED panels in 2011, and will start installing new production equipment in 3Q 2010. The OLED line will be remodeled from the company's idle 3.5G LTPS (low-temperature polysilicon) equipment. AUO has already announced plans to recuit new employees for the OLED production plant.

AUO 14-inch OLED prototype

The Holst Centre has released a new proprietary roll-to-roll (R2R) sintering platform for fast and low-temperature curing of printed conductive structures. The center is progressing towards a complete tool set for R2R manufacturing and can be used for plastic electronics such as flexible OLEDs, organic PV solar cells and more. Holst' line now includes printing, coating, drying and lamination stages in addition to the new sintering unit. A vacuum deposition stage is currently in development.

Screen printed structures on foil photo

High web speeds and low temperatures are key elements for R2R manufacturing of plastic electronics. The sintering platform uses a new photonic sintering process, developed by Holst Centre, which heats only the printed target material rather than the whole carrier substrate. The tool can sinter printed conductive structures in less than a second, which is already enabling a fast throughput speed of over 5 meters/minute. It also works at significantly lower temperatures than traditional sintering techniques, preventing distortion of the carrier substrates and reducing energy costs.

Vitex Systems announced that their equipment licensees SNU Precision and Sunic Systems have received multiple orders for Barix thin-film OLED encapsulation equipment. SNU Precision got their first Barix TFE tool order in Taiwan, and Sunic Systems' order came from China. This is their 2nd chinese customer.

Vitex say that by the middle of 2010, there will be 16 Barix TFE tools operational at customers (some customers have multiple sets of equipment).

We know that Vitex customers/partners include Samsung, UDC and LG (In December 2008 Vitex has shown a video of several products and prototypes using their encapsulation technology.

Samsung Mobile Display's president of engineering Brian Berkeley said yesterday that Samsung is accelerating its development of OLED displays, including increasing the size and volume to enable rollout of OLED TVs. Samsung has been critical of OLED TVs in the past years, but things are changing: there's high volume AMOLED production, with millions of OLED displays for mobile devices shipping each month.

Samsung 30-inch 3D OLED TV prototype

Samsung are now making huge investments in OLEDs, including development of medium to large sized panels. They are actually working on how to scale a Gen 4 sized plants (like they have today) to a Gen 7 or even a Gen 8, which will be able to make TV panels economically. This will require either much more powerful lasers working much more quickly than today's process for creating the backplane on which they deposit the OLEDs, or some alternative technology. There are also issues in color patterning, for which Samsung thinks it has a new unique solution, and OLED printing.

Berkeley predicts that a 40" OLED TV will use only 10 watts in about five years (compared to 40 watts today for a 40" LCD). He also said that the technology will be great for 3D TVs (image switching is quicker and so left and right images are completely separated).

3D-Micromac AG has developed and introduced a new laser structuring process for OLED thin film layers. Based on the microSTRUCT workstations a laser system was developed in the mayor field for selective structuring application of anode layers. Hereby the nearly transparent semiconductor tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) is used as anode material.

3D-Micromac says that the integration of an ultra short pulsed laser in microSTRUCT
guarantees a gentle structuring of anode without material damage at substrate level. Special highlight is the processing of variable and scalable substrate sizes. It is realized by an innovative software controlled scanner machining concept achieving a structuring speed of up to 1 meter per second. In addition further layers of OLED can be machined with the same laser system. For instance there is a possibility to repair short circuits and remove other defects in the layer system of the OLED. The laser system can also be used engrave the glass substrate. Marking can be done at the surface of the substrate and also as intra glass marking. The nearly athermal laser machining allows a micro marking of glass without micro cracks in the substrate.