Manufacturing equipment - Page 10

Universal Display recently announced that it is accelerating OVJP R&D, and the company is looking to commercialize this technology with partners. UDC expects it to take a few years before OVJP can really be deployed in production. The company published the video below that shows off the technology and explains the basic principles and advantages.

OVJP stands for Organic Vapor Jet Printing, and the basic idea is to use a gas-stream based process that resembles ink-jet printing but one that uses evaporation OLED materials which outperform soluble ones. In an OVJP process, the OLED materials are evaporated into a carrier gas that delivers them to a jet engine for direct printing of patterned OLED layers. OVJP is intended for large-area OLED displays and can be scaled up to 10-Gen substrates according to UDC.

Japan-based Canon Tokki is considered the world's leader in vacuum evaporation equipment, and the company has a large backlog - reportedly it had to decline orders from several OLED makers as all of its capacity was taken up mostly by Samsung Display and BOE.

The Korea Herald reports that LG Display has now managed to order two 6-Gen deposition systems from Canon Tokki. The price of each system is around $115 million, and it can support up to 15,000 monthly substrates. The first machine will be delivered in December 2017 and the second in February 2018.

According to ET News, Japan's Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) has terminated Samsung's exclusivity for the company's fine metal masks (FMM) products. DNP is now offering its masks to other OLED makers, and have already signed up BOE Display as a customer.

DNP has advanced its FMM technology, and is now able to produce masks with high resolution - enough to create QHD (2560x1440) smartphone displays. BOE's current masks only enable it to produce FHD OLEDs, and it will now upgrade its production to higher-end displays using DNP's masks.

Production laser deposition equipment developer Solmates announced that it has sold a small panel (200x200 mm) PLD tool to CSOT, to be used in the company's pilot OLED line that is being built in Wuhan, China. CSOT will use the new tool to deposit the ITO electrodes on OLED displays.

Solmates patented the process of OLED ITO electrode deposition using PLD and has developed the technology that enables large-area deposition of ITO on room temperatures. The PLD process results in very high quality ITO deposition and Solmates says that the achieved transparency is higher than currently used methods. Solmates' tool will be placed in CSOT's new cluster tool that is place in Wuhan since the end of 2016. Solmates will deliver the tool in June 2017. The current tool is used for R&D, but the technology can be scaled to larger substrates and to be used in production systems.

Israel-based Orbotech announced that TianMa selected the company's Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) and test systems in its new 6-Gen flexible OLED fab in Wuhan, China. Orbotech's systems will be used to optimize the quality, throughput and process efficiency at Tianma's new production line.

AMOLED panel produced at TianMa 6-Gen fab, Wuhan

Orbotech also reveals that Tianma's investment in this new fab will reach about $1.8 billion. The new fab has stated sample production recently and will ramp up to mass production by the end of the year. The new line capacity will reach 30,000 monthly substrates, and Tainma aims to double the capacity in 2018.

SFA Engineering announced that it has signed a $53.5 million contract with OLED developer Royole to supply OLED manufacturing equipment. SFA did not disclose what kind of deposition equipment it will deliver exactly.

Royole is constructing a 5.5-Gen flexible OLED production facility in Shenzhen, China. The new fab is scheduled to begin operation in 2018 and will have a monthly capacity of 45,000 substrates.

Four companies in Germany have established a new industry alliance, the German OLED Technology Alliance, or GOTA. The aim of this alliance is to combine the experience of its partners in the area of OLED manufacturing. Each partner's expertise lies at a different stage of the value chain, and the four partners will support a joint sales effort - mostly in China, Taiwan and Japan.

The four partners are VON ARDENNE (systems engineering and technology development for PVD vacuum coating system), Notion Systems (functional materials inkjet platforms), Fraunhofer IAP (organic electronics research) and MBRAUN (protective gas atmosphere solutions).

A report from SinoCast claims that LG has decided to sell OLED production equipment to Tianma. The deal was signed in May 2016 and deliveries of the equipment have now commenced.

TianMa 6-Gen AMOLED fab, Wuhan

This is a rather strange report. First of all, the company mentioned was LG Electronics, which do not produce OLED displays - LG Display (the report does say that "LGD uses the same equipment").

Von Ardenne announced that the company developed an innovative machine to process flexible glass. The FOSA LABX 330 Glass enables a roll-to-roll glass coating process. This first of its kind machine was developed as part of the German KONFECT project, launched in 2015, together with partners Fraunhofer FEP, Schott and Tesa.

Von Ardenne now says that it intends to intensify its cooperation with the Fraunhofer FEP in the flexible glass coating field. The Fraunhofer will present coating samples of glass produced using the new machine for the first time at LOPEC 2017.

Applied Materials' CEO, Gary Dickerson, says that demand for advanced chips and technologies will keep rising as the smartphone race gets tighter and tighter. Specifically regarding OLED displays, Gary estimates that we are in the early innings of the adoption of OLED into mobile devices.

Gary says that even at the rate of equipment being purchased today, the OLED market represents at least a $2 billion opportunity for Applied. And it is expected that the rate of adoption of OLED displays will increase.