Universal Display Corporation (UDC) - Page 10

Universal Display recently announced that it is accelerating OVJP R&D, and the company is looking to commercialize this technology with partners. UDC expects it to take a few years before OVJP can really be deployed in production. The company published the video below that shows off the technology and explains the basic principles and advantages.

OVJP stands for Organic Vapor Jet Printing, and the basic idea is to use a gas-stream based process that resembles ink-jet printing but one that uses evaporation OLED materials which outperform soluble ones. In an OVJP process, the OLED materials are evaporated into a carrier gas that delivers them to a jet engine for direct printing of patterned OLED layers. OVJP is intended for large-area OLED displays and can be scaled up to 10-Gen substrates according to UDC.

Universal Display was recently awarded a new patent (USPTO #20170186976) that describes high electroluminescent efficiency TADF OLED emitter and host materials based on benzotriazoles.

It is very interesting to see UDC developing TADF material. The company is focused on phosphorescent based OLEDs but, as they explain in the patent application, "phosphorescent materials generally contain a rare metal element such as Ir or Pt. These metals are rather expensive and are dependent on limited global resources". TADF could also be a viable route towards an efficient blue emitter (blue-emission is specifically mentioned in UDC's new patent).

Universal Display Corporation published an updated virtual tour of some of its state-of-the-art OLED materials and technology labs in Ewing NJ. The video gives a nice introduction to UDC and its OLED technologies and materials:

Japan Display has extended and updated its evaluation agreement with Universal Display. UDC is supplying its phosphorescent OLED materials and technology to JDI for use in its OLED displays. The financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.

JDI was formed in November 2011 by Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba who combined their small/medium panel production capabilities and received $2 billion from Japan's Innovation Network Corp (INCJ). JDI has an active OLED R&D program and plans to begin producing OLED panels in 2018.

Universal Display announced its financial results for Q1 2017. The company reported an excellent quarter, with revenues of $55.6 million (up 87% from Q1 2016) and net income of $10.4 million (up from $1.9 million in Q1 2016). Material sales were $46.6 million, up 92% over Q1 2016.

Universal Display believes that the OLED industry is poised to grow faster than earlier expectations in 2017, and the company raised its 2017 guidance to at least $260 million to $280 million - reflecting a year over year growth of 30% to 40%.

Samsung started shipping its Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ phones in Korea, and some of the first customers are complaining that the display have a reddish tint - which did not go away even after correcting the color display settings. This issues was quickly labeled as "Red Gate"... will Samsung face a new crisis?

Samsung itself says that there are no quality issues - and that the problem can be adjusted. Customers are welcome to replace their device, though, at service centers in Korea.

Aixtron announced that it received a purchase order from a major Asian OLED display manufacturer for an OLED deposition system to be installed at the customer site within the second half of 2017. Aixtron does not specifically mention OVPD but as far as we know Aixtron only offers OVPD systems for OLED deposition.

Aixtron and the OLED display maker will collaborate to qualify Aixtron's technology for the production of OLED displays. Aixtron says that is OVPD deposition technology (developed originally by Universal Display, and licensed exclusively to Aixtron) offers several unique advantages over competing systems and it can enable the highest deposition rates, provide an efficient material utilization while minimizing the risk of degradation of organic material.

Universal Display was granted a new patent that describes a novel hybrid MEMS display that uses patterned red, blue and yellow sub pixels combined with a MEMS-LED display.

The idea here that the whole display sits on top of a blue-emitting edge-lit LED structure. The blue light only goes through small subpixel-sized "holes" which are controlled using tiny MEMS shutters. A blue LED is much more efficient and long lasting than a blue OLED, so the idea here is to combine the efficient red, green and yellow phosphorescent OLEDs with the efficient blue LED.

Digitimes Researcher states that currently Samsung Display and LG Display both rely on imported organic materials used in OLED production, but the two Korean makers aim to decrease this reliance. Both companies are buying stakes in companies outside of Korea (for example Samsung's Novaled acquisition and Sun Fine Chem investment) in order to obtain patents and move production in house, mostly at LG Chem and Samsung SDI.

The polyimide used as a substrate in flexible OLEDs, for example, is produced by Japanese Ube Industries - and used by both LG and samsung. Several organic materials used in the OLED stack are produced by Universal Display (PHOLED emitters), Idemitsu Kosan, Dow Chemical and Merck. Both companies use glass mostly from Corning and high-temperature thin film for the back-end processing from 3M.

Universal Display reported its financial results Q4 2016: revenues were $74.6, up 20% from Q4 2015. Material sales were $29.2 million (emitter sales increase 25% over Q3 2016) and Samsung's licensing revenues were $37.5 million. The net income in Q4 2016 was $25.8 million.

UDC's revenues in 2016 reached $198.9 million, up slightly from 2015 ($191 million) - mostly driven by higher royalty and license fees (commercial material sales revenues were lower than in 2015). Net income in 2016 was $48.1 million, and operating cash flow was $80.3 million.