OVPD

Last year APEVA announced that it has commissioned a 2-Gen OVPD OLED system in a customer pilot production line in Asia. Yesterday Aixtron (APEVA's parent company) announced that it received the final acceptance for its OVPD system from its customer - which is one of the world's largest display manufacturers.

APEVA now plans to enter into discussions about the feasibility of a final qualification project (phase III), which would ensure the scalability of the OVPD deposition technology to large area substrates.

Researchers from the University of Michigan, in collaboration with Universal Display are developing a low-cost roll-to-roll (R2R) process to produce flexible OLED lighting panels. The goal is to achieve a panel cost of less than $10 per klm - a tenfold reduction compared to current costs.

The roll-to-coll system can continuously produce encapsulation panels, at high speeds and reduce costs. The front plane (organic stack) deposition is done via OVPD. The researchers say the will demonstrate reliable, encapsulated 25 cm² flexible white OLED panels with an efficacy of 50 lm/W and a CRI >85 on barrier-coated plastic films or thin glass.

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.

Aixtron announced that it has commissioned a 2-Gen OVPD OLED system on a customer pilot production line. In the coming month the facility will deliver test results for the customer. Aixtron expects to receive an order from its OLED customer for a large-scale test system as part of its ongoing qualification process for OVPD technology.

Aixtron says that is OVPD deposition technology (developed originally by Universal Display, and licensed exclusively to Aixtron) offers several unique advantages over competing systems and it can enable the highest deposition rates, provide an efficient material utilization while minimizing the risk of degradation of organic material. In 2017 Aixtron spun-off its OLED business unit to a new subsidiary called APEVA.

In 2015, the EU launched the €4.4 million Flexolighting project (led by Brunel University London) with an aim to develop new materials, processes and methods to overcome current OLED lighting challenges - including lifetime, lighting uniformity and more.

The project's consortium announced that following the project completion and a rethinking of the complete OLED supply chain, it believes that high efficiency OLED lighting panels can be produced at a cost that is on a similar level with LED lighting.

Aixtron announced that it received a purchase order from a major Asian OLED display manufacturer for an OLED deposition system to be installed at the customer site within the second half of 2017. Aixtron does not specifically mention OVPD but as far as we know Aixtron only offers OVPD systems for OLED deposition.

Aixtron and the OLED display maker will collaborate to qualify Aixtron's technology for the production of OLED displays. Aixtron says that is OVPD deposition technology (developed originally by Universal Display, and licensed exclusively to Aixtron) offers several unique advantages over competing systems and it can enable the highest deposition rates, provide an efficient material utilization while minimizing the risk of degradation of organic material.

Aixtron announced that it installed a OVPD OEC-200 (200x200 mm) system at Institut Lafayette (a part of the Georgia Institute of Technology international campus in Metz). The new OVPD system joins a previous MOCVD tool installed at Lafayette.

Aixtron and the Institut Lafayette also signed an agreement to collaborate on future research and development activities.

Aixtron announced that it has reached an important milestone with its new OVPD demonstrator OLAD (Organic Large Area Demonstrator). After an internal test phase lasting several months and producing excellent results in some cases, the system is now available for initial customer tests.

Aixtron says that the OVPD technology (developed originally by Universal Display, and licensed exclusively to Aixtron) offers an optimized and efficient deposition with very short cycle times compared to conventional VTE systems - which should lead to drastically reduced OLED production costs.

Aixtron has acquired US-based thin-film encapsulation (TFE) developer PlasmaSi for $16 million. Aixtron will combine the encapsulation technology with its OVPD OLED deposition equipment. Aixtron will also integrate PlasmaSi’s thin-film encapsulation process into its existing OLED cluster for customer demonstration purposes.

Aixtron OVPD R&D Demo Cluster

PlasmaSi developed organic thin-film deposition technology based on very low temperature silicon nitride Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD). The technology can also be used to deposit large-area OLED lighting panels and flexible Integrated Circuits.

Germany-based AIXTRON is a leading deposition equipment provider for the semiconductor industries - used for a wide range of applications, from LED to graphene deposition. For the OLED market, Aixtron is offering Organic Vapor Phase Deposition (OVPD) equipment (which was exclusively licensed to AIXTRON by Universal Display).

Juergen Kreis, AIXTRON's Director Business Development, was kind enough to update us on Aixtron's OLED business and answer a few questions we had on the company's technology. Juergen joined AIXTRON in 2010 as Director Business Development with special focus on the portfolio for organic material deposition solutions.

Q: Hello Juergen. Can you give us a short introduction to AIXTRON's OLED related products and services?

AIXTRON’s core expertise clearly is in the offering of proprietary process solutions for the deposition of organic thin-films, with OVPD (Organic Vapor Phase Deposition) and PVPD (Polymer Vapor Phase Deposition) being the core process technologies. As the fabrication of organic electronics requires many manufacturing steps, flawless integration of the respective processes into an automated material flow is essential.