SMS

Samsung Display filed a lawsuit against LG Display over OLED technology tech leak. Samsung Display claims that LG Display stole 18 confidential technologies relating to OLED displays, demanding a billion won (almost $900,000) for each technology. Samsung also said that LG Display gave some information to a third party.

In July we reported that 11 former and current Samsung employees were charged of giving LG Display confidential OLED technology, and this is Samsung's reaction in court. Actually, it seems strange that Samsung is only seeking about $17 million dollar in damages - this seems to be a very small amount when you consider that the OLED display market is now estimated to be about $6 billion, and is set to grow to about $44 billion by 2019.

There's an interesting article in HDTV Magazine about Samsung's and LG's OLED TV program. The author says that an LG Executive old him that Samsung has given up on direct-emission OLED technology and will instead opt for LG's WOLED (RGBW) in their upcoming OLED TVs. According to the article, this is because of issues with manufacturing and scalability.

I personally find that hard to believe, but of course, like the article's author says, "anything can happen". Months ago, when we learned that LG will use a WOLED design in their TVs, it was assumed that we'll see some ugly marketing battles between those two different OLED architecture. So perhaps this is all there is to this rumor. Hopefully we'll hear something from SMD soon.

Last month we reported that the Korean police is investigating a case of AMOLED technology leaking from Samsung Mobile Display to a "local rival firm". We suspected the rival firm is LG Display, and today this is confirmed. The Korean police announced that they are questioning 10 LG Display employees, all former SMD employees. LGD's stock fell around 5% on the news.

This technology is Samsung's Small Mask Scanning, used to produce AMOLED on large substrates.

The Korean police announced today that they are investigating a case of key technology leaking from Samsung Mobile Display to a local rival firm. This technology is Samsung's Small Mask Scanning, used to produce AMOLED on large substrates. The local rival may be LG Display (Samsung's biggest AMOLED competitor) but this is strange as they are using a completely different front plane architecture (WOLED-CF) in their own large panel production and this technology does not require fine patterning.

11 people were arrested in the case - former and current researchers at SMD and employees of the rival firm. The main suspect is a 46 years old former researcher at SMD who now works at the rival company. The police suspects he received 190 million Won (about $168,000) for the secret data. He is also suspect of sharing the information with a Chinese display maker.

There's an interesting article discussing a team of engineers in Samsung which developed the Super AMOLED HD displays. As was suggested before, Samsung is still using a Shadow Mask (or FMM) to fabricate Super AMOLED HD displays. Using new materials and a new manufacturing process they managed to develop such a fine mask that enabled over 300ppi - a thing that was considered impossible by several companies.

So Samsung didn't move to LITI production yet, and they are still using FMM. Samsung also developed a new technique called Small Mask Scanning (or SMS) will enables them to scale up AMOLED production to 8-Gen plants.

Update: according to new reports, the OLED-A was wrong and Samsung are still using a Shadow-Mask to fabricate Super AMOLED HD displays

The OLED Association published a very interesting paper discussing Samsung's and LG Display's efforts to scale OLED production to large size panels (specifically 55" OLED TVs). In the article, they say that Samsung will use an LTPS substrate with a SMS (Small Mask Scanning) method, while LGD plans to use an Oxide TFT and Kodak's White OLED with color filters architecture. We already reported about Samsung's SMS method a few weeks ago.

The article includes a very interesting comparison of the different deposition methods (FMM, LITI, SMS, Printing and LG's RGBW). They also claim that the new display in the Samsung Galaxy II LTE HD was produced using LITI.

There's an interesting report that both Samsung and LG have recently produced prototype 55" OLED TV panels. These panels will be unveiled in the FPD International 2011 exhibition in Japan next month.

According to the report, Samsung has produced the 55" panel in their 5.5-Gen line using Small Mask Scanning technology (SMS, which replaces Fine Metal Mask, or FMM). As was previously reported, LG is using white OLED with color filters to produce their large panels. Both companies are satisfied with the panels' quality, power consumption and lifetime.