Plastic - Page 6

A couple of months ago Konica Minolta unveiled new flexible OLED lighting prototypes, and today they sent me this beautiful video showing these new panels used in a motorized sample design called "luminous wing":

Unfortunately KM won't reveal any technical details yet, apart from the panel size (150x60 mm, but we knew that already) and the fact that the substrate is plastic. Back in 2010 KM (together with GE) unveiled flexible OLED panel prototypes that achieved 56 lm/W and "commercially viable lifetime" using soluble materials in a roll-to-roll process.

Indium-Tin-Oxide (ITO) is currently used in OLED panels for the transparent cathode (or anode in top-emission OLEDs). ITO is useful because it is conductive and transparent, but its supply is limited (even though companies are now harvesting ITO from recycled electronics devices) and it's also brittle (so it's not suitable for flexible panels) and so companies are looking for alternatives.

Some products that use Cambrios Ag-Wires

One possible alternative are silver wires (or ag-wire). This technology is pioneered by Cambrios - a company established in 2002 with an aim to commercialize Ag-Wire based products. Cambrios ClearOhm is a Ag-Wire coating material used to create transparent conductive layers. ClearOhm can be deposited on thin films using a roll-to-roll (R2R) process, and is compatible with plastic substrates. It's also possible to use a sheet process on glass or plastic. Cambrios has filed over 175 patents for this technology and they claim they hold basic ag-wire patents. My friend Sri Peruvemba recently joined the company to become its chief marketing officer and he was kind enough to discuss their technology with me and help me with this article.

Yoon Bu-hyun, LG Electronics's mobile business VP said that LG plans to launch a mobile phone that has an unbreakable flexible OLED display in Q4 2013. LG Display started working on these flexible OLEDs in late 2011 and they consider those displays to have a real value for the mobile solution (as opposed to glass based OLEDs which LG considers inferior to LCDs for mobile applications).

LG/UDC flexible OLED panel prototype

The last time we heard from LG Display regarding their flexible OLED was in January 2013. Back then the company said it was on track to start mass production of plastic based flexible OLEDs in H2 2013. The capacity will be "very limited" and they expect to be able to support just one or two customers. LG Display's flexible OLEDs will use polyimide coated substrate and direct-emission RGB sub-pixels (as opposed to LG's OLED TV which use white OLEDs with color filters).

The OLED Association posted an interesting article today in which they say that Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note 3 phone (phablet?) will use a YOUM display (a plastic-based unbreakable flexible OLED). Samsung will unveil the new phone at IFA 2013 (September) and will launch it in Q4 2013.

Galaxy Note II

Samsung YOUM displays use a plastic (Polyimide) substrate, an LTPS backplane, direct-emission RGB patterned OLED sub pixels and thin-film encapsulation (using Vitex's multi-layer technology). It's not known yet what the size and resolution of this particular display, but the OLED-A estimates it will be at least 5.9" in size, but probably will not achieve Full-HD resolution. The Note 3 will also not use a curved display.

Universal Display's CFO, Sidney Rosenblatt, participated in an investor conference (the 15th Annual Needham Growth Conference, January 15). This was an interesting presentation. Sidney confirmed that Samsung's next AMOLED products will include the company's green PHOLED material (and probably the host too), which will make them more efficient (by 25%). The new products will be released in Q1 or Q2 2013. According to reports, this will be the Full-HD 4.99" 440PPI display prototype shown at CES.

Regarding Samsung's flexible display program, Sidney says that Samsung is still using LTPS. The production process is too hot for the plastic substrate (it will melt) and so the LTPS transistors are deposited on glass and the glass is later delaminated. The encapsulation technology is Vitex's multi-layer technology which is very slow (the panel has to enter the evaporation chamber 6 times). All this means that plastic displays will be more expensive than glass ones.

Samsung has officially launched their YOUM flexible OLED technology. While the YOUM brand was shown back in April 2012, it is now officially the name of Samsung's plastic-based flexible OLED panel products. The company didn't reveal any new technical details, nor did they say when they'll start shipping products based on those panels (or ship panels to other customers) - but it seems that they are getting closer and closer to mass production. Personally I think we'll still have to wait a year (at least) for them to overcome all technical issues with production.

While we don't have any interesting facts to tell here, we do have some cool videos - showing a bendable panel and also devices that use curved YOUM displays. One of those devices (shown below) has a 5" curved YOUM panel.

CNet reports that Samsung Display officials have confirmed that the company will unveil a 5.5" 1,280x720 (267 ppi) plastic-based flexible OLED display at CES 2013 (January 8). The screens on show will be curved, but apparently they will not (yet) roll up. SD still has to develop the touch panel and final encapsulation, according to CNet.

It's not clear yet how close Samsung are to actually commercializing such technology. Originally Samsung planned to release the first plastic-based OLEDs in 2012, but this was pushed back to 2013. I'm not entirely sure Samsung will actually be able to mass produce such displays in 2013.

LG Display's CEO Han Sang-beom said that the company plans to start mass producing flexible OLED panels in the second half of 2013. He wouldn't say whether they got any orders for the next-gen flexible panels, but obviously there are speculations that Apple is behind those orders. It's probably unlikely as capacity at first isn't likely to be enough for Apple.

This actually marks an expediation of LG's flexible OLED plans. In January 2012 the company said that they will start constructing a new pilot line in Q3 2012, which will become active by the end of 2012 and the company will need 1-2 years to develop and verify the process before producing at mass volume. 

Samsung already announced that the Note 2 will be launched on August 29, and today they have released a short teaser video towards the event:

The video doesn't show much beside the stylus, and the saying that the new device will be "a small and light thing". Rumors on the web suggest that the Note 2 may be the first device with a flexible YOUM plastic-based AMOLED display.

There are reports suggesting that the upcoming Galaxy Note 2 will feautre a 5.5" YOUM flexible OLED panel. The display will not be bendable though. It will be based on a plastic (polymide) substrate and will be virtually unbreakable. It will also be thinner than current AMOLEDs by around 0.4 mm - which will enable Samsung to use a biggest battery.

We do know that Samsung has plans to launch flexible YOUM panels by the end of the 2012, I'm not sure if the first screen they'll produce will be a large 5.5" panel. In any case, we don't have a lot to wait - Samsung confirmed that the new Note will be announce on August 29.