In September 2013, Veeco acquired Synos Technology for $185 million for the company's FAST-ALD flexible OLED encapsulation technology. Veeco did received a purchase order from SDC for a first-generation FAST-ALD prototype system, but the significant orders Veeco hopes to achieve never materialized.
In early 2015 Veeco announced that they do not see near-term revenue coming from this sector. Yesterday Veeco decided to significantly reduce future investments in its ALD technology development. Veeco says that some "competitive technologies" solved the display makers problems and it now sees ALD business pushed back two or three years.
Last month Kateeva announced that it takes a "commanding lead" in the OLED thin-film encapsulation (TEF) market, using its ink-jet based encapsulation systems. Kateeva's ink-jet printers are used to deposit organic materials, but the full TFE stack also contains in-organic materials. Currently both Samsung and LGD use POCVD to deposit that in-organic materials.
Interestingly, some reports suggest that both Korean makers aim to switch to ALD as it provides a better deposition technology (results in more pure layers) - so it is not clear why Veeco is so pessimistic. Of course there are other ALD players that perhaps offer a better solution compared to Veeco's FAST-ALD.
