Universal Display Corporation (UDC) - Page 14

Researchers from the University of Michigan developed a new phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) emitter that extends the lifetime by a factor of 10. Researchers have been trying to develop an efficient, long-lasting blue PHOLED emitter for years now, and this may be the breakthrough everybody's been waiting for.

OLED makers SDC and LGD already use red and green PHOLED emitter materials in their OLED panels. While phosphorescent emitters do not last as long as fluorescent emitters, they are much more efficient. All commercial OLED displays currently use a fluorescent blue emitter as the best PHOLED blue to date only lasted for a few hundred hours.

Following is a sponsored post from Smithers Apex:

All of the key players in OLED lighting and displays will be in Berkeley, CA just outside of San Francisco in two weeks! At the OLEDs World Summit 2014, you’ll hear directly from LG Display, Novaled, BASF, Audi, Acuity Brands Lighting, Konica Minolta, DuPont Displays, Panasonic, Visionox, BOE, Philips Lighting and many others. OLED-info.com readers can save an additional $100 off of the conference fee by using code OLEDINFOVIP when registering online. This code is not retroactive.

This is a global event and the world’s decision makers will be in attendance. Organizations already registered to attend include 3M, Apple, Corning, European Patent Office, Honda R & D, Kateeva, Motorola Mobility, Pixelligent, Samsung and more. There is no other gathering that will give you unlimited, unfiltered access to those who will grow your understanding of OLED technology and show you how to remain competitive in today’s rapidly evolving lighting markets.

Update: the first video was removed from YouTube and is no longer available

Winstar, a leading PMOLED producer from Taiwan, hosted a seminar in June 2014, and they gave two OLED lectures - describing their OLED products in the present and the future development expected from Winstar.

There's some interesting details in there. First of all, while Winstar is currently producing glass-based PMOLEDs, the company is also developing flexible PMOLED panels. One of the major challenges is encapsulation and Winstar is using ALD technology for this at the moment, developed in collaboration with ITRI.

When Samsung launched the Galaxy S5, DisplayMate tested the new display (a 5.1" FHD, 432 PPI, Super AMOLED) and found it to not only be the best mobile display ever tested at Displaymate, but also 27% more efficient than the 5" Full-HD one on the GS4. Samsung told DisplayMate that the improvement mostly came from more efficient OLED materials, but they never told us which materials exactly.

During a recent investors conference, Universal Display revealed that the GS5 uses their new red emitter material, and the company says that "Samsung attributes the increase in power efficiency" to the new emitter. This is rather surprising as I wouldn't have thought a new red emitter can effect the power efficiency of the whole display so dramatically.

Universal display posted their financial results for Q2 2014. Revenues were $64.1 million, including a $25 license payment from SDC (up from $49.9 million in Q2 2013). net profit was $20.4 million.

Material sales reached $35.9 million - $13.2 million from green host sales, $15 million for green emitter sales and $4.4 million for red emitter sales. Sales to LG Display reached $9 million (a little bit lower than in the first quarter). Sales to Samsung were somewhat "soft", but this was offset by sales to other partners.

A couple of months ago, Samsung release the Galaxy S5 LTE-A, that sports the company's latest AMOLED panel - a 5.1" QHD (2560x1440) Super AMOLED. Anandtech posted a long review of this new phone, and they find that the display is actually a little bit more efficient than the 5.1" FHD panel used in the GS5, even though it sports a higher resolution (which usually means a less efficient display as the aperture ratio gets smaller.

Anandtech further says that Samsung told them they switched to a new, improved emitter material for the new QHD panel, which explains the increased efficiency. This is interesting as the QHD display was released only a few months after Samsung started producing the FHD panel, which by itself was 27% more efficient than the previous generation panels - also due to more efficient OLED materials.

Back in January 2014 Aixtron and Manz announced they will co-develop solutions for efficient OLED production, based on Aixtron's OVPD technology - specifically a Gen-8 (2300x2500 mm) system. During a recent conference call, Aixtron said that the Gen-8 tool is still in qualification and it seems that it will take some time before this is ready to commercialization. Aixtron is however "very optimistic" regarding the business aspects of OVPD.

Aixtron recently installed an R&D "cluster" at their clean-room that demonstrates the core processes used to produce organic semiconductors (deposition of OLEDs and flexible electronics). The Gen-1 (200x200 mm) cluster is built around three OVPD systems embedded in an automated cluster environment.

In November 2013 Universal Display signed a collaboration and evaluation agreement with Philips' OLED lighting unit, under which UDC will start supplying Philips with sample PHOLED materials. Today UDC announced that Philips signed a commercial material supply agreement.

This means that Philips intends to use UDC's materials in commercial OLED lighting products. This is not surprising as it is widely accepted that UDC's PHOLED materials are required to produce efficient OLEDs.

Three weeks ago, Seeking Alpha published my first article on Universal Display, titled "Universal Display: 20X Jackpot In 2018?" - in which I presented my best-case scenario for the OLED market (and UDC) in 2018.

I think the article was received well, and today SA published my second article - "Universal Display's Second Key Customer Is On Its Way". In this new article I explain why Samsung Display is such an important customer for UDC - and how I expect in that in the coming years UDC will diversity its key customer base as I expect LG Display, Konica Minolta, Everdisplay, BOE, Philips and LG Chem to start mass producing OLEDs soon.

Today Seeking Alpha published my article on Universal Display, titled "Universal Display: 20X Jackpot In 2018?". In this article I present the best-case scenario for UDC (and the OLED market) in 2018. I'm trying to estimate what will happen if small/medium capacity continue expanding fast, if OLED TVs become mainstream and if OLED lighting mass production begins.

As I said in the article's introduction - this is mostly aimed for fun, but I think it's not an impossible market forecast for 2018. I even tried to be conservative in some areas (for example I do not take a stable blue PHOLED emitter into account). So if you're a UDC long (or short, or just thinking about an investment, really) - this could be an interesting read.