Plastic - Page 8

There are already speculations about the Galaxy S III specifications, and now Samsung says they are indeed working on a successor to the Galaxy S2. They won't unveil it at the Mobile World Congress 2012 - but rather in a separate event during the first half of 2012, closer to the commercial availability.

It will be very interesting to see Samsung's new flagship phone, and obviously we're mostly interested in the display. Will it be a Super AMOLED HD, or will Samsung surprise us with some new technology? Maybe the S3 will be the first phone with a plastic based flexible AMOLED? We'll have to wait a few months to find out...

There are reports that LG Display decided to built a pilot 3.5-Gen (730 × 460 mm) flexible OLED production line. They have ordered the equipment, which will arrive by 3Q 2012, and the line will become active by the end of 2012. An official from LGD is quoted saying that it will take 1-2 years to develop and verify the process and produce prototypes. The company hasn't decided on a production schedule yet.

LG Display's flexible OLEDs will use the same technology as Samsung's flexible prototypes - a polyimide coated substrate and direct-emission RGB sub-pixels (as opposed to LG's OLED TV which use WOLED with color filters).

During LG Display's conference call discussing their Q3 2011 financial results, the company reiterated plans to release a 55" OLED TV product in the middle of 2012. LG's OLED TV will be Oxide-TFT based. This will not be mass production, but the company hopes that towards the end of 2012 they will announce their plans for mass production. LG Display is aiming towards 80%-90% yield in their pilot plant, and will announce the yield in the middle of 2Q 2012.

LG OLED TV prototype

We already know that LG isn't developing small OLED panels for mobiles any more, but LG are developing plastic based OLEDs (using their existing 4.5-Gen fab) as they consider these to have the real value for the mobile solution. They say that as they have experience with plastic based e-paper prototypes they hope that this is will not take long to develop.

Researchers from the University of Toronto developed the world's most efficient OLED on plastic, which they say is comparable with the best glass-based OLEDs. They discovered that coating the plastic substrate with a 50-100 nano-meter thick layer of tantalum(V) oxide (Ta2O5), an advanced optical thin-film coating material enabled them to re-construct the high-refractive index property previously limited to heavy metal-doped glass:

The researchers say that to create a high-efficiency OLED you need a high-refractive-index (n 10,000 cd/m².

Samsung Electronics says that it plans to launch products with flexible OLED panels next year, probably starting with mobile phones, then followed by tablets and other portable devices. The company is actually hoping to introduce the products in the "earlier part of 2012".

This was reported before, although up until now Samsung said the plan is to launch flexible OLEDs in 2013 or 2014, so it's good to see they are advancing more quickly than they thought before. Samsung's flexible AMOLEDs will be fabricated on a plastic (Polyimide) substrate and will be able to withstand high temperature (up to 350-400 degrees). The displays can be bendable - but we assume that the first products will use them inside rigid glass cases - so it'll actually be "curved" displays and not flexible ones.

LUX Research released a new OLED lighting report (Finding the End of the Tunnel for OLED Lighting) in which they say that OLED lighting will remain a small niche player in the future - in fact in 2020 worldwide revenues will only amount to $58 million.

LUX Research says that while OLEDs will drop from $18 per lumen today to $0.71 per lumen in 2020, this will not be enough as the technology will still lag behind other display technologies, and this will limit adoption. LUX Research also forecasts that flexible OLEDs on plastic substrate will be cheaper than glass - and will cost $0.18 per lumens in 2020. They say that 63% of the OLED market in 2020 will be flexible OLEDs.

ETNews posted a couple of articles claiming that Samsung Mobile Display plans to start mass producing flexible AMOLEDs in 2012. This is actually consistent with what we hear from other experts - although Samsung officially said in December 2010 that the plan is to start mass production in 2013-2014. ETNews says that the recent joint-venture with Ube Kosan on Polyimide production means that the development process of the new technology is complete and Samsung now focuses on production technologies.

Samsung's flexible AMOLEDs will be fabricated on a plastic (Polyimide) substrate and will be able to withstand high temperature (up to 350-400 degrees). The displays can be bendable - and rolled down to a two centimeter radius. ETNews says that Samsung will use the new displays in mobile phones, tablets and also watches and glasses. Here's a nice video showing the flexible displays:

Update: We have some info and a new photo of Toshiba's flexible OLED prototype. See below.

Toshiba is showing an ultra thin (0.1mm) 3" flexible OLED panel prototype (160x120) that weights just one gram. The OLED is built using an oxide semiconductor TFT (IGZO) unto a plastic substrate. Toshiba says that they will be able to start producing displays based on this production method by 2014 or 2015.

Toshiba's OLED uses white OLED material with color filters. The architecture is bottom-emission. Toshiba says that the managed to lower the process temperature to 200°C, and so were able to use the plastic substrate.

Universal Display unveiled a new single-layer hybrid organic-inorganic encapsulation technology for OLED (or other thin film devices). The new technology can be used on rigid and flexible substrates and may accelerate commercialization of plastic substrates based displays.

The new technology uses environmentally-benign and non-toxic materials in a potentially low-cost process. UDC collaborated with the Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University to demonstrate the technology effectiveness, and the implementation was supported by the US DoD, DoE and the National Science Foundation.

Researchers from Samsung Electronics developed the world's first Quantum-Dots emissive full-color display (called QLED). Samsung produced a 4" 320x240 Active-Matrix QD-Emissive display made on both glass and flexible plastic.

QLED display promise to be more efficient than LCDs and OLEDs, and be cheaper to make (Samsung estimates that they will cost less than half of what it costs to make LCDs or OLED panels) - but as of today, QLEDs are less efficient than OLEDs, and also offer about 10,000 lifetime hours at best. It is estimated that it will take at least 3 years to commercialize QLEDs - and obviously by then OLEDs will improve a lot, too.