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What is the future of OLED?

Choong Hoon Yi, president of UBI Research made a keynote speech with a theme “The Future of OLED” at ‘The 3rd OLED Korea Conference’ hosted by UBI Research for two days from March 8 to 9.

Choong Hoon Yi, president of UBI Research stated “100-inch rollable wall TV is the future of OLED”. “human eyes have a wide viewing angle so even if display covers the whole wall, there is no discomfort. Glass substrate OLED may be difficult to carry, and accordingly rollable display can be rolled up and delivered like a carpet.” he added.

He also predicted “plastic substrates and printing process for price cut will be suitable for rollable display. TFT and pixel production techniques made by Solution process will be a key to future technology”. If a speaker is built in rollable display, and a correspondence between the person and sound on the screen will represent a perfect display.

Choong Hoon Yi said the reasons for the success of OLED can be found out in the mobile market.
Firstly, 4K contents to be used for future TVs will be used in smartphones, and smartphones will also use 4K resolution.

Second, Apple will release the OLED iPhone this year, and there will be an Apple effect because Samsung Display is building the A3 line for Apple to produce 200 million 5.5-inch OLED displays.

Third, Chinese market accounts for 40% of the global smartphone market, and Chinese set companies have been rapidly increasing the release of smartphones.

Lastly, a flexible OLED to cover the full screen smartphone will have no home button and feature wide screen to satisfy visual functions, and its strengthened security system that reads fingerprint and pattern can be applied.

For the four reasons above, he expected OLED will be key in the future mobile market.

Meanwhile, he expected the shipments of OLED panel will be 1.7 billion in 2021, and the sales will amount to US$ 75 billion. Korean display companies will represent more than 80% of the total market in 2021, and China will take up 10~15%. In addition, he forecast that display panel companies will make a new investment in flexible OLED which will account for 70% of the total OLED market.

Visionox Announced OLED’s Own Innovative Technology is Flexible Display

Visionox’s principle researcher Li Lin gave a keynote speech with a theme “Development of Foldable AMOLED Display” at the 3rd OLED Korea Conference held for two days from March 8 to 9 by UBI Research.

Principle researcher Li Lin explained the development trend of flexible display, saying “Initial CRT was originally developed as an oscilloscope, but due to the development of full-color technology, it has been used commonly in our lives. LCD was also developed as a segment display, but due to the development of semiconductor technology, TFT black plane was applied to LCD so that LCD could be able to be used for smartphone and large-screen TV as well. The combination of the latest electronic technology and material technology enables display innovation, and the most innovative technology of OLED different from existing displays is a flexible display, Visionox is intensively developing now”.

In addition, he introduced the development history of Visionox’s flexible display, unveiled touch sensor 7-inch foldable AMOLED display that was developed in November 2016, and announced this module featuring 180° out-folding passed a folding test.

<Flexible AMOLED display with the touch-sensor featuring 180° out-folding, Source: Visionox.com>

He added that in order to develop foldable display, it is very essential to improve reliability of TFT, use durable materials such as strong OCA, scratch-resistant and durable cover window film, thinner circular polarizer layer, and panel-combined touch panel, and decrease module thickness.

Meanwhile, principle researcher Li Lin said “The mass production of Flexible OLED panel finally depends on the yield improvement. But, skills and experience for mass production are still insufficient.” Regarding the question about the development of circular polarizer layer, he answered “Reducing thickness is a key. And, we are considering the way to combine with another layer.” Lastly, regarding the development of Touch panel, “Among various technologies, especially on-cell technology is now under examination”, and regarding materials, “Metal mesh seems to be a good alternative, but there is no specific plan yet” he announced.

UDC Introduced Organic Vapor Jet Printing That Keeps the Life time and Efficiency of OLED Emitting Material

Mike Hack, vice president of UDC introduced solution process technology, OVJP (Organic Vapor Jet Printing) technology during the COLOR IS UNIVERSAL Session of “The 3rd OLED KOREA CONFERENCE” hosted by UBI Research.

Mike Hack emphasized “OVJP technology can still use OLED materials used for the deposition process unlike the existing ink-jet solution process, and FMM and solvent are unnecessary”.

Besides, he introduced UDC’s Novel BY Display Architecture. According to his announcement, this structure has increased the mask opening size for one-time 2 pixel deposition. Also, Novel BY Display Architecture features the alternate deposition of blue and yellow sub pixels instead of existing RGB, and red and green CF in half of yellow sub pixel is arranged in a vertical symmetrical fashion.

Mike Hack said “This structure maximized not only the fill factor of blue and yellow sub pixel but also the color reproduction rate, efficiency and life time of OLED panel”. He also mentioned it can reduce manufacturing costs due to the use of less than 3data per pixel and 2-step EML deposition(FMM).
Lastly, UDC closed its announcement adding that they aim at the development and commercialization of PH emitter and host.

Meanwhile, according to “Market Entry Analysis for Solution Process OLED” by UBI Research, the emitting material used for the ink-jet solution process employs a method of mixing various solvents in an emitting material used for the deposition process. It lowered the purity of a materials, thereby reducing emitting efficiency and life time. Despite this advantage, solution process can increase the usage efficiency of emitting materials without using color filter and manufacture large-screen OLED panels via RGB pixel structure without panel split through over Gen8 equipment. Due to this advantage, major panel companies are actively developing it and trying to achieve the preoccupancy of commercialization.

What is the key to successfully commercializing the Next Flexible OLED?

During the 3rd OLED KOREA CONFERENCE Samsung Display’s head researcher Taewoong Kim gave a keynote presentation on the topic of ‘Flexible Display: Application & Technical issue’

Head researcher Taewoong Kim emphasized that the 3 factors ‘Technical Breakthrough, New Application, and Strategic Partnership will be the key that successfully commercializes flexible OLED.

Head researcher Taewoong Kim mentioned that the first key for the successful Flexible OLED, Technical Breakthrough, has the four issues, improving durability of cover window and surface-coating of organic-inorganic materials, flexible electrode material and low resistance touch panel, decreased layer numbers and flexibility of encapsulation, and backplane which has low stress structure and demands a flexible and robust TFT material.

It was announced that the 2nd New Application needs an area expansion in Life & Health, transportation, wall display, loT, signage/PID, and education. Having the strength of design freedom, the Flexible AMOLED can be applied to various areas such as shoes, watches, glasses and the roll able which is an optimum display that is small and can maximize portability and materialize large screens. Even though the automotive has a long way to go due to lots of issues such as low life expectancy in harsh environments, it was emphasized that the AMOLED can create various applications.

Finally, head researcher Taewoong Kim emphasized and concluded with the win-win strategy through panel, material, equipment, and communication, collaboration, confidence between industry-university-institute was needed.

According to the ‘Key Issue and The Market Analysis for Foldable OLED’ by Ubiresearch, Samsung Electronics has successfully entered the smartphone market through design differentiation by using flexible OLED and is predicted that even several other set companies will actively use the flexible OLED to have competitiveness in the premium smartphone market. Following this, it is forecasted that the flexible AMOLED panel (including for smart watches) will grow to 1 billion in 2020.

CYNORA, what is its research and development goal from now on?

During the 3rd OLED KOREA CONFERENCE, Andreas Haldi of CYNORA presented the research result and future development direction with the topic on Efficient blue TADF emitter: material in high demand.

Andreas Haldi said that he did an in-depth anaylsis on the spectrum characteristic development of deep-blue TADF emitter classification and the interaction between host and guest. He revealed that the EQE (1000nits) of the deep-blue TADF emitter improved from 15% to 24% and life time (500nits) rose to 1000h from 300h.

However, it was mentioned that the efficiency and life time showed a decrease due to material quenching when applying the deep-blue TADF emitter to the OLED. He added that in order to resolve this problem, CYNORA is doing a joint development with a panel company and plans to reach a minimum of 0.2 for CIEy, above 15% for EQE(1000nits), more than 100h for LT97(700nits) by 2017, which is the aim for mass producing a mobile and TV deep-blue TADF emitter.

Andreas Haldi revealed and expected that in the case of using the improved deep-blue TADF emitter, the production unit price and power consumption decreases and at the same time makes it possible to produce an improved OLED display resolution which can be used in large vacuum processing lines of main panel production companies.

He also presented that with the device based light-blue TADF emitter a host and stack which can apply material refining technology and injection, layer, transport layer, and blocing layer was developed.
He ended with that in regard to the future direction of the blue-emitter development it will improve the EL peak to its fullest and set a goal and develop a deep-blue TADF emiiter that has 60nm FWHM and 460nm wavelength range.

As the leading company that has actively done studies on TADF material for many years, CYNORA is focusing on blue emitter material which is the biggest issue of improving the performance of OLED displays.