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Why do we need MicroLED displays?

10/24/2017

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MicroLED is considered by some to be the fourth generation flat panel display technology after, plasma, LCD and OLED. It combines the best features of LCD and OLED, with higher brightness, significant increase in power efficiency and the potential for lower cost.
MicroLED is not in production yet, but hopes to challenge LCD and OLED. Why do we need MicroLED displays?

TV: Mature LCD Technology Dominance
After replacing CRT, and displacing Plasma, LCD technology is still dominating the TV market. OLED, the next generation display technology for TV, has a very small presence in 2017 due to higher costs and lower production volume, in-spite of superior visual performance. OLED display panel production volume is steadily increasing courtesy of LG Display. Top TV brands including LG Electronics, Sony and many other Chinese TV brands have adopted OLED technology for their products in recent years. Sales are increasing.
However, the top TV brand, Samsung, is following the path of quantum dot technology. The company is currently selling QLED TVs, with quantum dot technology-based backlight LCD TV. In future it is planning to introduce quantum dot emissive display that can offer even higher display performance, although mass production of “Quantum dot emissive display” TV is a few years away.
The mature LCD TV display technology is still improving with higher resolutions (4K and 8K), higher brightness, and wider color gamut, all improving visual performance. Production volume will increase significantly in the next few years with 10.5 Generations fabs from China. LCD technology is still dominating the digital signage, monitors, notebook and tablet markets. With technology developments, innovations and increased production, there seems to be no need for MicroLED display in the large panel market, especially for TV.

Smartphone: LCD dominance, OLED poised to take over
LCD is still dominating the smartphone market. Within LCD technology, the market is shifting towards LTPS (low temperature poly-silicon) away from amorphous-silicon (a-Si). LTPS LCD production capacity is increasing, product is performance improving, and costs are reducing. There are multiple suppliers from different regions including Samsung Display, LG Display AUO, Innolux, JDI and BOE. Production capacity is expanding and more supply is coming. But OLED is gaining higher share with design differentiations and flexibility.
Sharp’s Oxide LCD (IGZO) with Gen 8 production capacity can fulfill higher resolution and lower power requirements for some products, while Truly from China is planning organic LCD production based on FlexEnable technology.
Samsung Display (SDC) is dominating OLED panel production for smartphones. Apple has also adopted OLED technology for its iPhone X. Flexible OLED has enabled innovative designs for Galaxy products and now with the Apple X it is poised to take over the smartphone market. OLED technology shines in flexible display applications, while LCD struggles.
Companies such as AUO and JDI are developing flexible LCDs. Organic LCD is also enabling plastic flexible displays, but OLED display is increasing its market share with thinner, lighter, lowered powered, and flexible display in spite of supply constraints in 2017. Samsung Display and LG Display are bringing in new capacity.
New suppliers from China are bringing further capacity in 2018 and beyond. OLED has some lifetime issues but these are not a major concern for smartphone displays due to the short replacement cycle in this application. The smartphone market seems to have no real need for MicroLED display.

Wearable: OLED Shines
Wearable products such as smart watch and activity tracker have a real need for thinner, lighter, lower powered, flexible displays. OLED display technology already shines in this category with products such as the Apple watch, Samsung Gear watch, LG watch and many others. Samsung and many other brands also use OLED displays in activity trackers. Also there are multiple suppliers producing OLEDs for wearable applications. OLED is fulfilling the requirements for this application segment, but there is a greater need for lower power, higher brightness displays.

VR/AR: OLED Meeting Market Requirements
There are very high growth expectations for the VR/AR market in the next five years because of products such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Sony PlayStation VR and Samsung Gear VR. Even though products such as Microsoft Hololens, Google’s Glass have come to the market, AR adoption has been slow due to high prices and low consumer acceptance. Products seem to be more accepted in the enterprise and vertical market.
Mobile VR has been more successful as a first experience for consumer with its low price, for example with a $99 price set for the Samsung Gear VR. Sales of dedicated VR sets such as HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Sony’s PlayStation VR have seen lower than expected in spite of high quality because of high prices and the need for connectivity with a high end PC or game console. Companies such as HTC and Oculus are starting to develop more stand-alone, all-in-one devices with lowered prices. New stand-alone products are expected to be a better growth driver.  All in one, stand-alone headsets have no requirements for a secondary computer as display and sensor technology are integrated into the single device.
OLED display has been gaining higher acceptance in VR market due to its high refresh rates, higher resolutions, and higher contrast for either direct view or micro display. But when smartphones are slotted into VR headsets, display resolution limits shows up with poor visual performance.

MicroLED not in mass production, hopes to challenge OLED
MicroLED displays are not yet in mass production, but some hope they will replace LCD and OLED in future. This is due to its strong potential to be a thinner, lighter, brighter, high resolution and low power display.
A microLED is itself a light source, so it does not need a backlight and it is the most energy efficient, long life system with high luminance for direct view or micro display. It has the potential to be developed at a lower cost using semiconductor fabs to produce LED and get higher yields with lower capex.
While MicroLED offers many benefits, the technology is still difficult to mass-produce and it has number of issues that need to be resolved to achieve market acceptance. MicroLED technology combines pixels with the light source but the most difficult issue is mass transfer of tiny MicroLEDs into backplane. Miniaturization of MicroLED potentially creates power leakage issues causing higher power consumption and lower lumen efficiency. Some companies have already found solutions to these challenges, however.

Need for MicroLED
​Smartwatch displays are small in size but they need high resolution and higher brightness for outdoor use with longer battery life. MicroLED will be able to meet these requirements and it is expected to exceed OLED in terms of brightness and power efficiency. Apple is reportedly working on MicroLED after acquiring Luxvue. If Apple does shift to microLED from OLED it will have significant impact on the display industry.
Oculus has perhaps acquired InfiniLED to incorporate MicroLED into VR headsets to have very high resolutions and a more immersive experience. MicroLED has the potential to challenge OLED in the wearable and VR/AR market.
OLED investment has sky rocketed for smartphone display. MicroLED display technology for smartphones is expected to be ready for mass production in the next three to five years. That's about the same time that it will take for most of the OLED suppliers to be ramping up to their full production capacities. But the possibility of MicroLED iPhones will bring a question mark to expectations for OLED growth.
Sony is targeting digital signage, public display and automotive applications with its Clecdis display, which is based on MicroLED components. The company says the performance is on par with next generation OLED technology.
Wearable and AR/VR application may have a real need for MicroLED. But it has the potential to come to smartphones, tablets and even to notebooks although the challenges may be too difficult to over come for it to achieve any significant market share. 
Sweta Dash (Reposted from DisplayDaily)

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A Sense of Exuberance at OLED World Summit

10/4/2017

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There was a sense of exuberance at the OLED world Summit in San Francisco, which I attended last week. Suppliers of the OLED industry value-chain exhibited strong confidence about the future demand growth for OLED displays.

The industry’s concern at the event was mostly on the supply side. Will there be enough production to meet the demand in the near term?

The increased confidence was the direct result of the eagerly anticipated introduction of iPhone X by Apple, two weeks ago. Its use of an OLED display for the iPhone X gave a real sense to the industry that the “mobile OLED era” has finally arrived. Now that Apple has adopted OLED display for its smartphone, others will follow. The industry feels confident that OLED mobile display will grow, expand and dominate the smartphone market.


The Mobile OLED era is here
Samsung’s smartphone models with OLED display will lead the way for the era to come. The OLED panel in the Galaxy was supplied by its sister company, Samsung Display. Innovations on the display panel side have enabled innovative design in the smartphone devices. The real shift came in 2015 when flexible OLED displays enabled differentiated design in the Galaxy series, bringing higher demand. But Apple’s adoption of OLED display for iPhone X made it official for the industry that the “Mobile OLED era” is here to stay.

The other factor that contributed to this trend is the number of OLED panel suppliers entering the industry with high capital investments, especially from China. Samsung Display has been the leading supplier for OLED mobile panels. LG Display, the other leading OLED supplier, has focused more on TV than on the mobile market in the past. But, in recent years, several suppliers from China including BOE, Tianma, China Star, EDO, Visionox, Truly and others have entered the OLED industry with major capital investments.

In terms of production capacity, Chinese investment is very aggressive but supply will be significant only after 2019. Top China smartphone brands are already using OLED displays in their high-end models. Demand for OLED panels is increasing even more now, after Apple’s entrance. But Samsung Display is the only true volume supplier for smartphone OLED displays, especially for flexible panels in 2017. Thus supply is constrained for the non-Apple and Samsung brands.
Flexible display can truly deliver differentiated designs. But the flexible OLED display production process is very complex and the cost is high. Samsung and LG Display are increasing their flexible display capacity and new entrants are also investing aggressively. But considering the complexity of the production process, manufacturing and yield issues, supply can be a real challenge and costs can be high impacting demand growth rates in the near term.


Foldable is right around the corner
Smartphone suppliers are looking for design differentiation to give a boost to demand. OLED Panel suppliers are developing foldable display to enable design differentiation. There has been a lot of speculation about when the concept will come to the market. First generation products are passively flexible to support curved designs and that has helped Samsung to create the full "infinity display" design in its Galaxy products.

Foldable displays could enable dynamic flexible product which are considered to be the second generation of flexible display products. Making a foldable smartphone requires the replacement of glass by plastic films for both the substrate film and the cover window film. For the substrate, companies need thermally stable polyimide (PI) films for cover windows, strong plastic films and hard surface coating.

Foldable design brings many new challenges especially from the stress management prospective. Film stacks need to be engineered to reduce stress. The film has to withstand repeated mechanical movements. For the Thin Film Encapsulation (TFE) stack, this could mean new materials and thinner layers. The industry expects the first foldable smartphone in 2018, but only in limited quantities. More products are expected in 2019. Some experts feel that more time is needed for the technology to mature for mass production. Market adoption of foldable products before the full development of technology might create several issues leading to poor adoption rates by consumers.


OLED TV is ready to bring design differentiation
OLED TV, up to now, has had a small presence in terms of unit shipments in spite of great picture quality. This was due to the lower production volume and higher costs compared to LCD TV. LG Display is the sole supplier of OLED TV panels in 2017 but more suppliers especially from China are expected to join in future. LG’s own estimation of production was 0.9 million units OLED TV in 2016 and 1.7 million in 2017. LG's production plan for 2020 is only for 6 million units.

Still, LG expects OLED to be the future of TV, because of picture quality and design differentiation. The self-emissive pixel dimming of OLED enables perfect black and infinite contrast ratio providing great picture quality. While mobile OLED is based on RGB OLED on polysilicon substrates, LG’s OLED TV panel is based on white OLED on an Oxide TFT substrate. LG feels this is the best solution for large OLED displays even for free form displays, considering the oxide TFT uniformity and process temperature on a plastic substrate.

LG introduced its Wallpaper TV concept in 2017. The crystal sound OLED which was also introduced in 2017, is said to provide an immersive experience by combining the video and sound on the screen. Instead of using a separate, speaker one gets direct sound from the screen.
LG has shown 77-inch transparent rollable/flexible displays for applications such as signage. OLED TV is also ready to bring design differentiation for better adoption rates. But low production volumes, manufacturing challenges and higher costs will keep adoption rates at a limited level.


Preparation for Printing OLED is continuing
The OLED industry is still searching for higher efficiency and longer lifetime materials. The big challenges in bringing a new generation of OLED products are performance, time to market, production quality and costs. R and D in OLED materials and equipment is continuing. Many companies are using simulation-assisted development to reduce experimental trial and error costs and accelerating research and development in materials and device structures.

The industry is still looking for better blue materials and longer life times. While the industry is working on better blue phosphorescence, Kyulux is working on its Hyperfluorescence solution while Cynora is working on TADF for emitter technology. Merck is working on a systematic full stack approach to OLED material development and focusing on ink development for printing and state of the art material development for vaporization.

The OLED industry is working towards using inkjet equipment and processes with better soluble materials. Challenges for using the OLED ink jet printing method have sometimes impacted device performance; issues such as poor yield rates, low productivity, and slow production schedules result in higher costs.

Kateeva, which makes inkjet printers, is focusing on its YieldJet platform for resolving OLED mass production issues. Kateeva's thin film encapsulation equipment for mobile OLED is already in mass production, delivering millions of flexible OLED products. The company expects RGB pixel printing for TV and mid-size OLEDs to be in mass production in the future.

Dr. Mike Hack , VP from Universal Display, presented the concept of Organic Vapor Jet printing, a solvent-less, mask-less patterning technology for OLED display. The OLED materials are the same as in standard vacuum thermal evaporation systems. It is scalable to Gen 8 plus fabs, Hack said.


Prospects are Bright
The OLED industry is feeling exuberant as it readies for next generation display applications with continuous development of materials, processes and products to provide flexible, foldable and rollable next generation products that can provide design differentiation. But, for higher consumer acceptance rates and higher growth in demand, technology innovation has to be combined with lower cost. - Sweta Dash (Reposted from Display Daily)
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Flexible LCD: In the Market at Last

10/4/2017

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When it comes to flexible display, OLED shines while LCD struggles. But recent announcements are bringing new hopes for flexible LCD.
In July this year, FlexEnable announced partnership with Truly to bring OLCD (Organic Liquid Crystal Display) in volume production by 2018. In January, JDI (Japan Display) announced its plan for mass production of plastic Flex LCD in 2018. Flexible OLED has been in full production for some time and is playing a major role in the smartphone market gaining market share. Can LCD technology bring flexible LCD in volume production to open up new opportunities?

Truly and FlexEnable - licensing agreement to volume produce Flexible OLCD
This licensing agreement aims to bring FlexEnable’s flexible OLCD technology into mass production on Truly’s lines within 2018. FlexEnable’s OLCD is based on flexible low temperature organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) backplane technology.
According to the company’s press release, it can be manufactured on existing TFT-LCD production lines using low cost plastic substrates such as TAC and PET. The company asserts that OLCD has better electrical performance than a-Si TFT, giving plastic LCDs the same display quality and reliability as glass-based LCDs. As it is using a plastic substrate, displays can be thinner, lighter, unbreakable (durable), shatterproof, and conformable enabling differentiated design. The FlexEnable process is compatible with existing flat panel lines. So most of the existing equipment can be reused, lowering the cost of getting into production. The use of low cost plastic substrate due to lower (less than 100º centigrade) processing temperature, contributes to lower costs and higher yield rates. Truly is the first display manufacturer to adopt OLCD and it will implement the process into its existing LCD production line in China.

Merck & FlexEnable – joint partnership to develop freeform flexible LC display on plastic
According to the company‘s press release, by combining FlexEnable’s OTFT with Merck’s polymer wall LC technology, organic LCD can be curved around even more complex surface and shapes. These polymer walls can enhance cell gap control while providing excellent display performance. The organic LCD from FlexEnable can have a bend radius below 30mm.

Freeform flexible LC display on plastic - expected to open up new range of applications
The OLCD display can be used in applications such as smart homes, automotive, digital signage and others. The FlexEnable OLCD has been shown as a pillar display in a future concept car. The automotive display market is experiencing dynamic growth due to connected vehicle development, auto computerization and autonomous car implementation. Auto designers are hoping to move away from rigid rectangular shape displays to free form or conformable shapes with more differentiated designs.
The auto display market has stringent requirements, with a very long design cycle. The market is getting to be more competitive with a-Si LCD, LTPS LCD, OLED and now OLCD displays all now competing for market share. Companies such as LG Display are already targeting the auto market with flexible high performance OLEDs. At SID's Display Week 2017, AUO showcased a 3.5” flexible TFT LCD using plastic substrate. To succeed in the auto market display, makers need to meet design differentiation, high quality (high resolutions, wide viewing angles, low reflection, accurate colors, high luminance, wide temperature range, high reliability) and lower costs.

AUO showcased a plastic flexible LCD at Displayweek in 2017
AUO showcased 3.5" plastic flexible LCDs, using a Polyimide (PI) plastic substrate. It is a bendable, unbreakable, conformable display designed for the instrument cluster auto market. The company also showed an 8.9" free form LCD display for rearview mirrors and a 9" curved LCD for CIDs (center information display). LCD panels are adopting curved form factors to meet future auto display requirements.

Japan Display (JDI) announced development of plastic flex LCD
In January 2017, JDI announced the development of a “Full Active Flex" 5.5" Full HD LC display, which uses a plastic substrate. With the Full Active Flex display, it is possible to form curved shapes by using the flexibility, which can expand the degree of freedom in smartphone design. The use of plastic also makes it shatterproof.
JDI is planning to start mass production of this display in 2018. The company is targeting this technology not only for smartphones, but also for notebook PCs, automotive applications and other products. Flexible OLED is already gaining market share in the smartphone market, mostly in the high end. But supply is constrained and the cost is high. Higher production of plastic flexible LCDs with lower cost could provide new options to smart phone brands.

OLED shines in terms of flexibility, but supply constrained in the near term
The biggest differentiator between LCD and OLED display is flexibility. The shift from glass-based to plastic displays enables thinner, lighter, and flexible form factors with more design differentiation options. Smartphone, automotive, wearable and many other applications are requiring display flexibility. Flexible OLED is already meeting those needs especially in the smartphone market. The upcoming iPhone 8 products are expected to include flexible OLED display models. In future, foldable smartphones are also expected.
In spite of great advantages, there are still many challenges for flexible OLED display, especially manufacturing difficulties. Up to now, Samsung is the only maker with successful high volume manufacturing capabilities. Even though many other suppliers are planning to come to market in the 2H of 2017 and 2018, it will take time and the process is challenging
.
High volume production of plastic LCD with lower cost could open new opportunities
Up to now there has been no volume production of plastic LCDs. But these recent announcements from JDI, AUO, FlexEnable, Truly, and Merck will enable volume production. Flexible LCDs are still in the phase of bendable or confirmable (due to LCD ‘s inherent structure) phase rather than truly flexible/foldable as OLED.
In conclusion, flexible LCDs will be coming to the market at last, but only with higher volume production and lower cost can it open new opportunities. - Sweta Dash, President, Dash-Insights (
Reposted from Display Daily)
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    Author

    Sweta Dash, Founder/President, Dash-Insights

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