Universal Display Corporation (UDC) - Page 2

Merck KGaA is a pioneer in high performance OLED material development, supplying a range of materials for AMOLED makers since the industry’s inception.

To learn more about Merck’s materials and views on the OLED industry, we conducted an interview with Dr. Georg Bernatz, Merck Electronics’ Global Head of OLED Technical Marketing. Georg Bernatz has received a PhD in Physics from the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany in 2000. In 2004, Georg joined Merck, where, over the years, he worked in various functions and on various topics in the field of Liquid Crystals for displays. In 2018, Georg changed to OLED, leading OLED Physics Product Research, and in 2020 he became responsible for all Physics & Application Labs in Darmstadt for Display materials. Since October 2023, Georg is heading Merck’s Global Technical Marketing for OLED materials.

Hello Dr. Bernatz. Can you bring us up to date quickly on Merck's current OLED material products? What do you offer to OLED display makers?

Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany is very active in the design, development and production of a broad variety of high performing OLED materials, with a strong focus on hole and electron transport materials (HTM, ETM), host materials for phosphorescent emitters as well as activities in the field of high efficiency blue.

Universal Display announced that it signed a long-term OLED material supply and license agreements with BOE Technology Group. This is actually an extension of UDC's previous agreement with UDC (which was signed in 2017). UDC did not disclose the financial terms.

BOE recently announced that it shipped over 100 million AMOLED displays in 2023. 

Universal Display is progressing with its blue PHOLED material, and earlier this month the company said it is on track to introduce the new material commercially in 2024. During a company seminar, UBI's Daejeong Yoon updated that according to their latest information, Samsung Display has decided to adopt a blue phosphorescence material in the second half of 2025 - a year later than expected.

Samsung is calling the new material stack B1, and it says that the new stack will increase the efficiency of its OLED device by more than 65% (which seems to be rather too much, maybe it means 65% of the power consumption of the current stack). UBI says that the blue OLED still suffers from low lifetime - the lifetime of the blue PHOLED stack is only 55% of the lifetime of its current fluorescence-blue stack, but regardless of that the company will introduce it commercially due to the power consumption efficiency.

During iMID 2023, Universal Display discussed the company's RGBB display architecture, highlighting the advantages regarding color gamut and color reproduction.The RGBB architecture basically adds a fourth OLED subpixel, a light-blue (or cyan) one to a standard RGB deep-color stack.

The current approach to achieve a large color gamut (UDC targets BT.2020) is to use emitters with a narrow spectrum, which enables high color gamut. But there's a catch - each person has a different color perception, and some people are less sensitive to certain colors compared to the "average observer". This causes a display that is based on narrow-spectrum emitters to suffer from distorted perceived colors.

DSCC expects the AMOLED stack material market to grow 4% in 2023, to $1.4 billion, and to reach $2.18 billion in 2027, that's a 12% CAGR from 2023 to 2027. In 2022, the market declined by 10%. The forecast does not include any UDC revenues from blue PHOLED materials, which means that if UDC succeeds in commercializing its blue material, revenues could be higher by hundreds of millions of dollars.

DSCC says that demand for OLED TVs will continue to decline in 2023. In 2022, revenues of OLED TV revenues declined by 17%, and in 2023 revenues will decline 3% further. Growth will resume, though, in 2024, and in 2023-2027 the market will grow at a CAGR of 13%.

Universal Display announced that it will detail advances in its latest PHOLED materials at Display Week 2023. The company's latest red, green, and blue PHOLED materials offer a narrow emission spectrum, which increases the efficiency of OLED devices, in addition to enhancing the color gamut.

UDC also unveil a new OVJP system printed on a 200mm x 500mm Corning Astra Glass substrate. UDC will also showcase the first-ever fully printed seven-layer (HIL/HTL/EBL/EML/HBL/ETL/EIL), 80 PPI, green commercial-level PHOLED device fabricated by its R&D OVJP system that has comparable device performance with vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE). 

In 2000 PPG Industries and Universal Display established a strategic relationship in 2000, and since then PPG has been the exclusive producer of UDC's PHOLED emitter materials. In 2021, the two companies announced that they will establish a new manufacturing site in Shannon, Ireland, for the production of UDC's emitters. Now UDC announced that the new fab is commencing operation.

The new production site will double PPG's production capacity of UDC's PHOLED emitters. This will also increase the company's ability to ensure uninterrupted supply of its crucial materials for the OLED industry. 

Universal Display Corporation announced that it has acquired Merck's Phosphorescent OLED Emitter Intellectual Property (IP) assets. This portfolio includes over 550 issued and pending patents around 172 patent families with an average lifetime of 10 years, and represents over 15 years of R&D. 

The two companies also entered into a multi-year collaboration agreement, in which the two companies will create advanced PHOLED stacks based on UDC's OLED green and yellow emitters and Merck's transport and host materials.