OVJP

OLED TVs offer excellent image quality, outperforming LCDs with superb contrast, excellent and vivid color reproduction and fast refresh rates. In addition, OLEDs enable thin and efficient TVs. OLED TV production has been increasing up until a year ago, reaching a potential capacity of around 10 million units. This is impressive, but considering the entire global TV market that amounts to around 250 million units, OLEDs represent only around 2.5% of the total market (it is important to note that OLEDs tend to be produced in large sizes and carry a much higher average selling price compared to LCDs).

But OLED TV production capacity growth has declined in recent years. In this article we will shortly detail the history of OLED TV production, and look at potential paths towards increased penetration in the future. More details and into the future of OLED technologies and OLED TVs is included in the OLED Toolbox.

A bit of history: in 2013, both Samsung and LGD started producing OLED TV panels. Samsung chose the straightforward RGB side-by-side architecture, in which there are three sub-pixels, with red, green and blue OLED emitters. LG chose its own WRGB (or WOLED) architecture (the IP was acquired from Kodak in 2009) which uses four white OLED subpixels (made from yellow and blue OLED subpixels). Both companies released 55" FHD OLED TVs, priced at over $10,000 per unit. It soon became clear that Samsung's approach was not scalable, while LGD managed to enter mass production quickly and reduce prices dramatically within a few years to compete with the dominant LCD TV technology.

Universal Display announced that it will detail advances in its latest PHOLED materials at Display Week 2023. The company's latest red, green, and blue PHOLED materials offer a narrow emission spectrum, which increases the efficiency of OLED devices, in addition to enhancing the color gamut.

UDC also unveil a new OVJP system printed on a 200mm x 500mm Corning Astra Glass substrate. UDC will also showcase the first-ever fully printed seven-layer (HIL/HTL/EBL/EML/HBL/ETL/EIL), 80 PPI, green commercial-level PHOLED device fabricated by its R&D OVJP system that has comparable device performance with vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE). 

Universal Display reported its financial results for Q3 2022, with revenues revenues reaching a record high of $161 million, and a net income of $53 million. The company reiterated its forecast for 2022, with revenues of approximately $600 million, plus or minus $10 million.

Looking ahead, UDC remains positive of the OLED industry, but the near-term OLED demand may fluctuate due to uncertainties in the macro economy. UDC sees 2024 as a "pivotal year" for the OLED industry, with several new 6-Gen and 8-Gen OLED fabs due in that year.

Universal Display reported its financial results for Q3 2021. Revenues were a record $143.6 million, up from $117.1 million in Q3 2020 and net profit was $46.1 million (up from $40.5 million from Q3 2020). The company has about $789 million in cash and equivalents, the it reiterates its full-year 2021 revenue guidance to be between $530 million and $560 million.

Regarding its blue PHOLED R&D effort, UDC says it is making "excellent progress", and the company believes that a commercial blue material is a question of when and not if.

Universal Display reported its financial results for Q4 2020. Revenues reached a record of $141.5 million, and net income was $54 million. For the whole of 2020, revenues reached $429 million and net income was $133 million.

UDC expects meaningful growth in 2021, and believe revenues will be in the range of $530 to $560 million. The company also announced an increase to its quarterly dividend (to $0.2 per share).

Japan Display says it is developing a new OLED production technology that will enable higher resolution and higher efficiency OLED displays, and the company is in talks with potential customers regarding a joint investment in producing next-generation OLEDs.

According to JDI's CEO, the company is using a new manufacturing technology that is different to the evaporation method currently used by OLED makers. It is not clear what is meant by that - it could be an inkjet-printing technology (but achieving high resolution for smartphone displays with inkjet printing is a challenge) or something like OVPD or OVJP - or a new technology developed in-house at JDI.

Universal Display established a new subsidiary, called OVJP Corporation, that will advance the commercialization of UDC's OVJP OLED TV manufacturing technology.

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. 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.

DSCC updated their display industry forecasts, saying that as LCD prices continue to fall it revises the capacity forecast downward by 6% as Display makers are delaying and cancelling LCD investments. DSCC's OLED capacity forecast is also reduced by 4% - and is now growing at a CAGR of 19% from 2016 to 2025 (the main reason is the cancellation of Visionox V2 phase 2 and LGD's E6 Phase 3).

DSCC says that OLED TV roadmap is still not clear as Chinese makers are not ready to commit to OLED TV production. DSCC does see next-generation TV capacity coming online in the future - which could be inkjet-printed OLEDs, OVJP, MicroLEDs and other potential technologies. But the next-generation display market is certainly not clear yet and DSCC sees an extended forecast during which demand will outpace supply (especially as average TV size continues to grow).

Universal Display reported its financial results for Q2 2019. Revenues were $118.2 million, the operating profit reached $48.7 million and net income was $43.4 million. UDC increased its 2019 revenue guidance to be in the range of $370 million to $390 million. The company ended Q2 with $553 million in cash and equivalents.

The Q2 results include about $15-20 million of orders that UDC estimates were pulled-in from the second half of 2019 as Chinese customers build up inventory for trade-related reasons.

Universal Display announced that next week during SID DisplayWeek it will demonstrate, for the first time, a PHOLED display device that was produced using the company's OVJP process at its recently-installed pilot line system.

The green OVJP device features a lifetime of over 50,000 hours (LT95) at 1,000 nits. At the tradeshow UDC will also show its latest commercial and development red, yellow, green and blue phosphorescent material systems in its "eco-friendly PHOLED Garden".