WRGB - Page 5

IHS Markit says that global AMOLED production capacity is set to grow from 11.9 million square meters to 50.1 million sqm in 2022 - that's a 320% growth in 5 years. Samsung and LGD will remain the market leaders and Korea will have a market share of 71% in 2022 (down from 93% in 2017). China-based OLED makers will have a market share of 26% in 2022 (up from 5% in 2017).

IHS says that the majority of OLED capacity will still be used to produce RGB (direct-emission) OLEDs in 2022. RGB OLED production capacity will grow from 8.9 million sqm in 2017 to 31.9 million sqm in 2022. WOLED (WRGB) OLED TV panel capacity will grow from 3 million sqm in 2017 to 18.2 million sqm in 2022.

As expected, Sony finally launched its first OLED TV (well, except the 2008 11" XEL-1). The XBR-A1E Bravia OLED TV features a flat 4K OLED panel. The TVs are based on the Android TV platform and feature HDR (both HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR) and a built-in speaker which is part of the stand behind the TV to create a stand-less form factor. Sony will offer the TVs at 55", 65" or 77" and the TVs will ship later in 2017.

The OLED panel themselves are produced by LG Display. According to reports, LGD agreed to supply Sony with 100,000 panels each year.

A couple of weeks ago, at IDW 2016, AU Optronics introduced a new bi-directional foldable AMOLED display. This display can be bent both inwards and upwards, unlike previous foldable AMOLED prototypes which can only be bent in one direction.

AUO says that the AMOLED structure limits the flexibility, and to overcome this the company replaced the circular polarizer usually used with a thin (10um) color filter array (apparently this is an WRGB display). AUO also used specially-located TFT and TFE (encapsulation) layers that endure many folding cycles - AUO says that the display can be bent more than 1.2 million times in 4mm curvature radius. The entire display thickness is 100 um.

During the International Display Workshops that was help a few weeks ago in Fukuoka Japan, LG Display discussed its new WOLED tandem stack that it plans to introduce soon to its OLED TVs and lighting panels.

LG Display says that its new stack is a "3-stack-OLED" while its existing stack is a "2-stack-OLED". As you can see in the image above, LG apparently counts each emissive layer as a different stack in this case.

UBI Research predicts that OLED TVs produced using a solution-based process will start to appear in the market in 2019. Evaporation-processed WOLED TVs will still be the market leader with a 85% market share (of the total OLED TVs) in 2021.

Solution-based OLED emitters are not as efficient or long-lasting as evaporation OLEDs, but ink-jet printing will enable to reduce costs compared to evaporation, and for OLED TVs this can make business sense, especially as a WOLED (WRGB) structure is less efficient than a direct-emission RGB architecture. UBI sees solution-based OLEDs competing with WRGB OLEDs for the mid-range TV market, not the premium one.

TCL's CSoT subsidiary demonstrated curved 31" FHD AMOLED displays at the 18th China High- Tech Fair. CSoT showed three such panels side-by-side, to create a 5760x1080 80" display. The WOLED WRGB panels offer 150 nits brightness (which is rather low).

CSoT are producing those panels in its Gen-4.5 pilot R&D line in Shenzhen. CSoT already demonstrated 31" AMOLED panels in June 2015, it is not clear what is the difference in the new prototypes.

UBI Research says that WOLED technology will lead the premium TV market from 2020 onwards. LCD will not be able to match the performance of OLED TVs at the high-end of the TV market, and solution-based OLED TVs and QD TVs will find it hard to penetrate the market as WOLED technology is one step ahead in commercialization.

According to UBI, in 2016 OLED TVs will grab a 16.7% share of the global premium TV market. In 2020, OLED TVs will lead that market with a 68.1% share.

After years of OLED R&D but no actual reports, Taiwan's Innolux is finally demonstrating its new OLED prototypes, signalling that the company is finally about to re-enter the OLED market. Innolux says that it has recently "achieved success with AMOLED technology" and now plans to continue development and ultimately mass produce AMOLED panels.

In a trade-show in Taiwan, Innolux is demonstrating several OLED prototypes. First up we have a 5.5" WQHD (2560x1440, 534 PPI) flexible AMOLED built on a plastic substrate and an LTPS backplane. The panel has a "proprietary pixel rendering methods" (perhaps PenTile like?) and uses thin-film encapsulation and is produced using an FMM mask (more on this below).

Reports from China suggest that LG Display is considering changing the basic structure of its white OLED panels (WOLED) used in LGD's OLED TVs. LGD is currently using yellow and blue OLED materials to create a white OLED, but now LGD may switch to an RGB based mix.

It's not clear from the Chinese reports (which are unverified yet, of course) - but it's likely that LGD will not switch to a direct-emission RGB structure, but rather use the RGB materials to create a white OLED and remain with a color-filter based design. Switching from Y/W to R/G/B may enable LGD to achieve higher color purity - and so a larger color gamut, and may also be more efficient.

Japan Display demonstrated flexible OLEDs at SID 2016. Those WRGB panels are 5.2" in size with a Full-HD resolution (1920x1080, 423 PPI). The luminance is 300 nits, the color gamut is 108% sRGB and the bending radius is 53 mm.

JDI refers to these panels as film-type OLEDs, or "curved-sheet OLED". The panels have quite a large bending radius. What's even more disappointing, though, is that these seem to be the exact same panels demonstrated at SID 2014 and SID 2015.