​OLED stack materials are likely a bit too esoteric for most investors and rightly so, with names like Tris[2-phenylpyridinato-C2,N]iridium(III) or Bis[2-(1-isoquinolinyl-N)phenyl-C](2,4-pentanedionato-O2,O4)iridium(III), such materials likely remind most of High School Chemistry and the embarrassment of not being able to define a co-valent bond when asked, but in some cases those materials can be quite important.  Not only do the materials in an OLED stack make a difference to the display, but they are key to a number of companies that produce and license those materials, such as Universal Display (OLED), NEolux (213420.KS), Hodogaya Chemical (4112.JP) or Idemitsu Kosan (5019.JP).   
OLED stack composition differs with each producer and there are a considerable number of subtleties that go into stack structure and the materials used for each category, but the most important is the emitters, those materials that produce the light that illuminates the display.  There are a number of types of emitters, but the broad categories are fluorescent and phosphorescent, with all but blue emitter material being phosphorescent.  Phosphorescent OLED emitters produce 3 times the number of ‘excitons’[1] as fluorescent OLED emitters and are therefore able to generate significantly more light, but are not available in blue, which makes the RGB (Red, green, blue) OLED stack one with red and green phosphorescent OLED materials and a blue fluorescent material.  Universal Display holds the IP for the use of phosphorescent OLED emitters based on a  number of heavy metals, and all commercial OLED producers use UDC’s phosphorescent OLED emitter materials and licenses same.
This gives UDC a considerable amount of leverage in OLED emitter pricing, but at the same time must maintain long-term supply relationships with its customers, particularly Samsung Display, LG Display (LPL), and BOE (200725.CH).  As part of those relationships, UDC develops new phosphorescent OLED emitter materials that it presents to its customers for evaluation, with the hope that these new phosphorescent emitter materials will be incorporated in the customer’s next OLED display stack iteration to improve the display.  But there is a bit more to the process, and that is phosphorescent OLED emitter pricing.
When a customer agrees to be supplied  by UDC the specific materials under the agreement are priced at an initial rate/kilogram and a schedule is derived that sets volume based points at which the price of the material declines until it reaches a ‘terminal’ value at which point it remains, so profitability for UDC, and likely other stack material suppliers can be dependent on the ratio of ‘new’ Phosphorescent OLED emitters the company sells relative to how much ‘old’ material the company sells, as each new material purchased sets that material’s price point back to the higher level and starts the price declination process again.
Given that in most quarters Samsung is UDC’s biggest customer, we pay attention to any information concerning Samsung Display’s plans for changes to its OLED stack as they correlate, at least to a degree, to a portion of UDC’s emitter material sales, and while it is difficult to decouple the various OLED stacks that SDC uses for each of its smartphone displays, we note that those changes can be part of the cause and effect that push UDC material sales in a particular direction.  A successful Galaxy smartphone using a new stack can generate incremental material sales for UDC, while the long-term use of an older stack material set could generate less. 
There is of course, a balance between a low volume product like the Samsung Galaxy Fold series that will likely update stack materials each year and lower price tier Samsung OLED displays that use older OLED emitter sets but generate higher volumes, so changes to SDC’s OLED stack materials can influence material suppliers and this year it seems that SDC has decided to upgrade stack materials in some models and not in others.  The Galaxy S21 used the M10 stack set and it looks like the Galaxy S22 will use the same, while the Galaxy S22+ will be updated from last year’s M10 stack to the newer M11, resetting the price, although surprisingly the Galaxy S22 Ultra, which has become a replacement for the Galaxy Note series which Samsung has discontinued, will not be upgraded from the M11 stack to a new emitter material set.
As this is the top of the Galaxy S Series, SDC is likely trying to contain costs against the rising cost of silicon and components to maintain the price of the S22 Ultra at last year’s level while maintaining margins.  In theory this could have some impact on UDC’ material sales this year, but would likely be a relatively small influence against and upgraded stack for Samsung’s foldables and the next iPhone iteration, which is also expected to see a new material stack.  We also take into consideration the expansion of LG Display’s OLED TV unit volume and BOE’s increased OLED display unit volume with Apple (AAPL) this year, so we expect any SDC material sales imbalances will be short-lived or barely perceptible, but we will know more tonight when UDC reports 4Q results and (hopefully) give guidance for 2022.


[1] Quasi-particles that releases light energy (photon)  for a short period before returning to a normal electrical state.

​Chinese OLED panel producer Tianma (000050.CH) has indicated that it has started production runs at irs T18 fab in Xiamen.  While this is likely test run production, it is ahead of our ramp schedule and while it will be a number of months before the fab will be at full (phase 1) capabilities, it will likely take considerably longer for Tianma to fill this fab’s capacity.  The fab itself consists of two 15,000 sheet/month flexible OLED production lines and additional room for a third line, for a total of (phase 1 and 2) of 48,000 sheets/month and has an estimated cost between $6.8b and $7.6b when completed.  Tianma runs a Gen 5.5 OLED fab in Shanghai that is primarily producing rigid OLED displays, another Gen 6 OLED line in Wuhan that was built for a full capacity of 37,000 sheets/month, but is not fully built out, and a Gen 4.5 pilot line used for R&D.
Last year Tianma began the year shipping ~1m OLED display on a quarterly basis, increasing that to between 2.2m and 2.8m as the year progressed, which gave them a share under 2% of the small panel OLED market, so the Xiamen fab will add to that share as it ramps production , however based on Tianma’s capacity last year, which based on a 6” display base, would have been ~154m units, so based on our estimates of ~9m units shipped last year, the  company’s OLED fabs are considerably underutilized or have extremely low yield rates.  This makes it more necessary for Tianma to build out customer relationships or improve yield rates in order for the new fab capacity noted above not to depress profitability further, which leads us to expect a later start for the second phase of the Xiamen fab. 
Tianma also runs a number of LCD fabs which provide much of its sales volume, although the newest Tianma LCD fab went on line in late 2017, and while all of its LCD assets are likely fully depreciated, they are heading into their 5th year of production and are likely in need of upgrades in order to compete with some of the newer LCD fabs in China.  This makes building expensive small panel OLED fabs that are producing at low utilization rates even more risky as capital has to be allocated to upgrade the LCD side in order to provide steady income, while the spending for OLED produces losses.  That said, in China the display industry is funded by the Chinese government at the provincial or city level primarily, and while those capital flows have shifted a bit toward semiconductor capacity, we expect Tianma will continue to be support with subsidies and financing from government entities until the Xiamen fab is completed, and while early individual stockholders might be happy with the results (initial price – 4/1/1995 - $1.82), current stockholders would be less so as over the last 2 years the stock has fallen from a peak of $17.90 in February 2020 to its current price of $12.07, not quite at its low (January 27,2022 - $11.83) but close to it.

Alienware (DELL) is the first monitor producer to use the soon-to-be-released QD-OLED panels produced by Samsung Display (pvt), in this case the 34” panels that will be produced along with 55” and 65” panels that will appear in the Sony (SNE) Bravia A95K series announced at CES, and (hopefully) parent Samsung’s (005930.KS) line of QD-OLED TVs later this year.  As Alienware has revealed pricing for the 34” QD-OLED monitor, we compared a few similar sized monitors to give some idea as the price of this new technology and how it relates to what is already available.  We note that comparing monitors is a difficult task as the number of variables can be large but we tried to show both older and newer models and how they compare along with higher and lower priced models in the table below.
We do note that the first OLED monitor, the Dell (DELL) IP3017Q was quite expensive when released, which is not unusual for an initial foray into a new technology, however the soon-to-be-released Alienware AW3423DW, while expensive as far as monitors go, is certainly not the most expensive, which is a bit surprising.  While the basic technologies, OLED and quantum dots are both used by a number of panel manufacturers, combining the two in a way that takes advantage of the positive aspects of both materials leads to new manufacturing processes that should keep costs high, especially in the early stages of production., so the fact that the Alienware monitor is not priced higher goes toward Samsung Display’s ability to maintain a reasonable cost structure from the onset of production, or at least that is what we would hope, as they also could be pricing the displays at or even below cost in order to garner interest from new customers for the technology.
Both Sony and Dell have committed to QD-OLED so there is certainly demand for the technology as a way to generate premium products, but a lack of enthusiasm from Samsung Electronics seems to have kept others in a more look-and-see mode before jumping on board.  Samsung, as the largest TV set brand, does have a vested interest in maintaining a broad line of TV technologies, with Micro-LED, Mini-LED/Quantum Dot, Quantum Dot Enhanced LCD TV, and LCD TV all part of the mix, so there are certainly pricing and tier considerations that Samsung must consider, but it will be hard for Samsung Electronics not to release at least a line of QD-OLED TVs in order to compete with rival Sony if reviews are positive, as we expect they will be, especially if prices for such sets are reasonable, as the Alienware monitor seems to indicate. 

​[1] Screen Refresh (Hz) – Time it takes for the entire screen to be repainted
[1] Display Response Time (msec) – The time it takes for pixels to shift from black to white to black, essentially how fast the display can switch colors.
[1] Typical Brightness (nits) – Average display brightness
[1] sRGB is a color space measurement that shows the percentage of that color space that the display covers.  The higher the better.

Samsung Display is Apple’s (AAPL) primary flexible OLED supplier for the iPhone, with LG Display having rebuilt it relationship with the company after problems with OLED displays in 2019 forced LG Display to prove to Apple it had resolved OLED display production issues through an extended requalification process.  More recently China’s BOE, has also gone through such an extended qualification process with Apple that after a number of failures has now allowed them to become a 3rd OLED supplier for the iPhone line.  While the qualification process that Apple requires is based on both the quality of the display and the ability to meet production goals (yield), the reward, given the iPhone’s popularity and its premium price, is considerable and a goal for almost all OLED panel suppliers and while Apple tends to keep the number of display suppliers for the iPhone to a minimum, we expect almost all OLED suppliers have or will try to gain that access.
Apple certainly has an incentive to go through the qualification process with potential iPhone OLED panel suppliers as the company is always looking for ways to bargain down panel prices with Samsung and LGD, so the inclusion, or even the possibility of inclusion of another supplier gives them increased leverage.  The offset is that SDC has been producing flexible OLED panels longer and in higher volumes than other producers, which gives them an advantage as to both technical capability and production stability, both key factors in Apple’s iPhone display producer choices, and SDC’s ability to produce LTPO (Low-temperature Polyoxide) backplanes, a necessity for Apple’s variable refresh rate feature, still keeps them ahead of the pack.
That said, there are contenders, with China’s Visionox (002387.CH) sampling to Apple last year and more recently Chinastar (pvt), a subsidiary of TCL (000100.CH) forming a group to work toward conforming its small panel OLED production to Apple’s standards.  China star operates a Gen 6 OLED fab in Wuhan with a capacity of 30,000 sheets/month and plans to add an additional 15,000 sheet line to the fab, so in its present state Chianstar would be in the early stages of a qualification process, which could eventually lead to the development of a pilot line specifically designed to meet Apple’s specifications.  Whether this means an LTPS line, which would put them in contention with BOE, or an LTPO line, which would challenge SDC and LGD remains to be seen, although Chinastar does have considerable expertise in developing oxide backplanes for LCD, but we expect any real volume production for Apple would be 2 to 3 years out, if they are able to get through qualification.
With a folding iPhone somewhere in Apple’s future, a new display category could help smaller OLED producers like Visionox, Tianma (000050.CH), or Chinastar step forward with Apple, but again Samsung Display has considerable expert and experience in the foldable space already so new entrants would have to find a feature that would attract Apple’s attention as more than a point of leverage, which is not an easy task given SDC’s size and resources.  The capacity issue is also a factor as much of small panel OLED production for Apple is done on dedicated production lines, some of which have been partially financed by Apple itself, but building such high volume lines is capital intensive, time-consuming (18+ months) and has no guarantee that yields will be high enough to produce profits, and also carry the risk that Apple will decide to reduce its OLED exposure at some point down the road, so these are no decisions taken lightly.  That said, with the vision of selling millions of OLED displays to Apple in their heads, it is easy to see why almost all OLED panel producers will vie for that brass ring, even if it burdens financial goals for years.  It will take some very understanding capital sources for most smaller producers to enter such a competition in a realistic way, so we are a bit less excited about the prospects for new OLED panel producers being added to Apple’s iPhone supply chain, but it is certainly in Apple’s best interests to encourage same.

​There has been some stir in the Korean trade press about LG Display’s (LPL) plans to expand it small panel OLED capacity which we found a bit odd considering the company announced plans to do so back in August of 2021.  In our 8/17/21 note, we outlined what we expected from the $2.8b project that LG Display had indicated that would be implemented over the next 2 ½ years.  LGD did not give much detail on the plan, which could include both a greenfield fab or capacity expansion at the company’s Gen 6 OLED fabs in Paju and Gumi, with the latter being the more logical path. 
Our take at the time was for a 10,000 sheet/month expansion at E6, which had already been discussed by the company, being boosted to 15,000 sheets/month, and an additional 15,000 sheet expansion in Paju, which could change to 30,000 sheets/month as the company’s business with Apple (AAPL) improved.  The current iteration, as noted in the Korean trade press, is that LG Display is ordering as many as eight ‘exposure machines’ at a cost of over 10b won ($8.4m US), indicating that LG Display is moving ahead with its expansion plans and could double its Gen 6 capacity by 2024.
Headlines aside, LG Display has two competitors in the Apple small panel OLED display supply chain, Samsung Display (pvt) and BOE (200725.CH), with SDC the leading supplier and BOE the new entrant.  SDC continues to push toward adding technology to its existing capacity, such as LTPO (Low-Temperature Poly-Oxide), that Apple desires, while BOE is adding Gen 6 OLED capacity at a rapid rate, expecting to complete its 3rd Gen 6 small panel OLED fab this year.  While BOE is likely going to supply Apple with less sophisticated LTPS OLED panels, LGD is in that middle ground, supplying some LTPS and LTPO this year.  In order for LGD to compete with both SDC and BOE, they have little choice but to expand small panel capacity, not as much for the 2022 year, but for 2023 and 2024 when BOE could represent not only a capacity competitor but a technology competitor.
The surprise to us is that, if the trade press holds true, that it took 6 months for LGD to finalize its plans while BOE continues its expansion and SDC converts more capacity to LTPO.    Negotiations with Apple over 2023 and 2024 supply contracts and the possibility of LGD expanding its small panel OLED relationship with Apple to larger displays (tablets, laptops) could have slowed actual capital deployment, but LGD has little choice but to expand capacity if it wants to remain a competitive small panel OLED display supplier to Apple.  We do note that LGD did have to face the issue of parent LG Electronics’ (066570.KS) termination of its smartphone business, and the weakening of Huawei’s (pvt) smartphone business, but BOE is certainly moving ahead with the idea that they can be a serious contender, so there is little room for a more refined decision process.  We expect LGD made at least verbal commitments for key expansion equipment in 4Q last year as part of its expanding commitment to Apple, making the recent fury over LGD’s expansion a less important event.

There have been a number of blogs and tech press spouting the headline, “Breakthrough could help you 3D print OLED screens at home”,  “You would be able to 3D print OLED displays at home with this tech”, or “It’s not hard to imagine in just a few short years you could see this approach applied at home or on the road…with small portable printers”, all of which seem to have come from an article published in “Science Advances”, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society and publisher of the “Science” family of journals.  The article entitled “3D Printed flexible organic light-emitting diode displays” (Ruitao, Hyun-Park, Ouyang, Ahn, & McAlpine, 2022), whose authors are associated with the University of Minnesota, describes a process for 3D printing all components of a flexible OLED display, hence the extrapolation that one day you will be able to print flexible OLED displays in your home workshop.
The production of flexible OLED displays is a complex process, typically involving spin-coating, sputtering, and plasma based deposition tools.  In some cases ink-jet printing is used to lay successive layers of organic and inorganic encapsulation material to keep air and water vapor from destroying OLED materials that are particularly sensitive to these elements.  There are a small number of OLED display manufacturers that use ink-jet printing to pattern the OLED materials themselves and the recently described QD/OLED displays from Samsung Display use IJP to pattern quantum dots on OLED materials.
However these commercial ink-jet printers are far removed from what one might call a home 3D printer, and the ability to pattern structures using metallic nanoparticles dissolved in liquids, pastes, or resins, which would form the electrodes for such a n OLED display are already far beyond the abilities of most 3D printers available to consumers.  But let’s say you are able to secure the proper metallic nanoparticles, correctly dissolve them in a solvent, curing agent, and wetting agent, and ink-jet print them on a substrate, once you have UV cured such material, you would have to find a conductive polymer that would be able to be printed on the nanoparticles to create the anode, among the simplest part of the OLED display.
Printing the ‘active’ layers of the OLED display would involve using a special nozzle for your 3D printer that could atomize the inks into droplets that are in the tens of micrometers, and you would have to precisely control the concentration of the ink and spray timing to make sure your layers are uniform, so this is not done with an EasyBake Oven.  We could go on about successive layers, light extraction, the OLED materials themselves, and the fact that the entire printing process described in the article was done on a 143 lb. robotic gantry, involved significant additional equipment owned by the college, and was only 64 x 64 pixels in size, but even the article itself did not point to the concept that by creating a completely ink-jet printed flexible OLED display under laboratory conditions, it meant in any way that this technology could be transferred to the average basement tinkerer.  It is a disservice to the OLED industry and the billions of dollars spent on both R&D and mechanical engineering to lead blog readers along such a path.  Someday there might be a way to commercially ink-jet print all of the structures in a flexible OLED display, but we expect it will take quite some time for that process to find its way into the basement, but if it does, don’t forget to keep those droplets uniform!

Over the last few years quantum dots have become a significant part of display infrastructure and have been one of two factors that have led to the ability of LCD technology to extend its dominance over newer display modes.  The addition of quantum dots to LCD displays, particularly in the TV space, has increased specifications for such displays, at a relatively low cost both from a product and manufacturing standpoint, and has given display brands a new product tier and substantial product differentiation. 
That said, we are in unparalleled times in the display industry, with a number of new display technologies surfacing that are all vying for a dominant place in the display world.  Mini-LED based displays, essentially a typical LCD display with an LED backlight on steroids, is the ‘other’ of the two technologies that has extended the life of LCD technology by improving this older technology’s contrast (The difference between pure black and pure white), a weakness that makes LCD technology less comparable to newer self-emitting technologies such as OLED.  
OLED has gone from a novelty in 2013 to the mainstay of small panel displays and while still a niche product in the TV space (<5% of total TV unit volume), it is a key technology in the lucrative premium display market.  As a self-emissive display mode, RGB OLED allows for ultimate control over each sub-pixel, generating almost infinite contrast, but large panel OLED displays are subject to two basic limitations, the first being an inability to manufacture TV size RGB OLED displays, and second, limitations on the brightness of the display.  OLED TVs use a combination of yellow/green and blue OLED emitters to create a white light that is made up of red, green, and blue light components, but in order to create the three colors necessary for an RGB display that white light must pass through a color filter, essentially a sheet of red, green, and blue dots.  Each dot will filter out two colors (for example a ‘blue’ dot will filter out red and green, while a red dot will filter out blue and green) which reduces the amount of light that is generated by the device.
OLED materials continue to improve and improvements in light extraction materials can also help to increase WOLED light output, but Samsung Display (pvt), the leader in small panel OLED, has been developing another approach that combines the properties of self-emitting OLED materials and those of quantum dots.  Yesterday Sony (SNE) announced that it would be releasing a 4K TV (Bravia XR A95K) later this year that is based on a QD/OLED panel produced by SDC, however while this is a major step for SDC, missing from the show was an announcement from parent Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) that it would also be releasing a QD/OLED TV.  While we expect that this omission was more of a tactical issue than a technology related one, Samsung’s approval and purchase of such panels are an absolute necessity for SDC, who must make the decision as to whether to expand QD/OLED production, which is currently capped at a maximum of 30,000 sheets/month. 
Without this additional potential demand SDC has little or no large panel TV display product, leaving Samsung Electronics to buy all of its TV panels from competitors and leaving SDC only able to compete in the small panel market, but Samsung Electronics must also consider where a QD/OLED TV might fit into their TV line , which already consists of pure LCD TVs at the low end, quantum dot enhanced LCD TVs at the mid-tier, quantum dot LCD+Mini-LED TVs at the top tier, and Micro-LED TVs at the ultra-high premium level. 
Rumors that Samsung is considering buying WOLED panels from LG Display (LPL) add another potential TV price class, so QD/OLED must find a place in what is a rather complex TV line-up at Samsung, and the marketing of each category is carefully considered by Samsung, who is the leader in the TV set space.  We expect Samsung Electronics to offer one or both OLED types, potentially using WOLED as a low-end OLED offering and QD/OLED as a high end OLED offering, but much will depend on SDC’s ability to keep the cost of QD/OLED panels in a range that allows Samsung these options, and with true mass production just beginning, it is likely that the focus at SDC is resolving potential yield issues rather than refining production costs.  Given the number of moving parts in such product decisions, while we were a bit surprised that Samsung did not make a specific announcement, we expect it will happen this year.
 

​Once again speculation runs wild over the potential purchase of OLED panels by Samsung Electronics.  While the last batch of rumors said it was just a matter of the fine details before an agreement between Samsung Electronics and LG Display (LPL) was signed and roughly 2m panels began to be shipped to Samsung as part of its 2022 premium TV line.  Since Samsung has not mentioned an OLED product in blubs before CES, rumors are now moving away from the sale over a difference in negotiated pricing.  According to local Korean trade press, it seems the two companies have been a bit further apart than previously thought, with LGD offering panels to Samsung at ~$650, while Samsung is offering to buy at ~$550. 
Samsung would certainly be a large customer if such a deal would go through, but even with LGD’s offered price, which is ~10% below the price that LGD sells to its parent LG Electronics, Samsung is looking to undercut LGE’s OLED TV pricing by enough that pure OLED TVs will become an option in their TV line, rather than a competitor to its own QD/OLED, Mini-LED/QD, and Micro-LED TV lines, which all fall into the ‘premium’ category.  With two of those three premium lines already established, Samsung seems to want to use OLED to fill out its LCD/QD line, which is situated below the Mini-LED/QD line.
As LG Display is essentially the only volume producer of large panel OLED displays, the growth is OLED TV set shipments and the increasing number of brands that offer them falls directly to them, and Samsung would be taking a sizeable chunk of their production in 2022 (~20%), which could leave some brands unable to meet their own OLED TV goals.  The question then comes down to profitability for LGD and consequently LG Electronics, who would see less profit from the Samsung order than otherwise.  If LGD is confident that they can sell ~10m OLED TV panels in 2022 without Samsung, it would make sense to hardline the price.  If they lack that confidence and are willing to accept a lower margin, they make the deal. 

LG Display (LPL) has announced a new, brighter OLED display, called OLED-EX, which it expects to put into production at its plants in Paju, South Korea during the 2nd quarter of 2022.  The company is said to have been using the new material at its plant in Guangzhou, China as part of its OLED TV panel supply to parent LG Electronics (066570.KS) for its EVO OLED TV line. The changes to the new panel are said (by the company) to be two-fold, with the first part a change in material composition, and the second a change in the way the sub-pixels are used.  LGD did not give much information on either change but we derive at least somewhat of an idea about the possible change to LGD’s OLED material composition.
Organic compounds are based on carbon, where the carbon atom is bonded to a hydrogen or other atoms or radical structures.  The bonds between these two elements comes from the fact that carbon, which has 4 electrons in its outer shell can share those electrons with 4 hydrogen atoms that have 1 electron in their outer shell.  In OLED displays, the application of an electrical current pushes the electrons out of the shell and as they fall back they give off that extra energy as light, hence the name light-emitting diodes; essentially what goes in as electrical energy comes out as light.  Sounds simple but it’s not.  If the reaction happens too quickly some of the excitons (let’s say ‘excited electron’) ‘quench’ the reaction of other excitons, reducing the light generated, and too little ‘push’ from applied current produces no reaction, so the organic materials and the electrical charge have to be carefully balanced.
Over time the bonds that hold such organic materials deteriorate, with higher energy organic materials (blue) deteriorating more quickly than lower energy materials (red and green), creating both lifetime discrepancies and persistence problems, also known as burn-in.  Chemical engineers have found that by substituting an isotope of hydrogen called deuterium, which still has the same one electron to bond to carbon but is a bit heavier (aka ‘heavy hydrogen’), they can slow down the reaction and reduce the ‘quenching’, increasing the brightness of the material without the normal decrease in lifetime that comes with more typical methods of driving materials to higher brightness by increasing the current.  While deuterium occurs naturally in water, the ratio is one atom for every 6,420 ‘regular’ hydrogen atoms and the process to separate those atoms is energy intensive, so LGD is buying the blue material from supplier DuPont (DOW), rather than its usual supplier of fluorescent blue emitter material, idemitsu Koasan (5019.JP).
While we don’t know precisely what LG Display has done to its OLED materials, based on IP filings by Samsung Display (pvt), Universal Display (OLED), LG Chem (051910.KS), Rohm & Haas (DOW) and others[1], the idea of substituting heavy hydrogen for elemental hydrogen in OLED materials is one of interest to many of those developing such materials, especially blue emitters and hosts, so we speculate a bit on what LG Display has done on the material side to generate a new OLED brand name.  As to the results, which are said to boost brightness between 25% and 30%, we expect both the material change and a new AI pixel processor contribute to the increase.


[1] Jeong, Eunjae, et al. ORGANIC ELECTROLUMINESCENCE DEVICE AND AMINE COMPOUND FOR ORGANIC ELECTROLUMINESCENCE DEVICE.
Chen, Hsiao-Fan, and Jason Brooks. ORGANIC ELECTROLUMINESCENT MATERIALS AND DEVICES.
Kim, Chi-Sik, et al. ORGANIC ELECTROLUMINESCENT COMPOUND AND ORGANIC ELECTROLUMINESCENT DEVICE COMPRISING THE SAME.
Kim, Seong-So, et al. ORGANIC LIGHT EMITTING DEVICE.
DOH, Yoo-Jin, et al. ORGANIC ELECTROLUMINESCENT DEVICE.
 
 

​On December 28, BOE officially began mass production at its Gen 6 OLED fab in Chongqing, a fab that will eventually be capable of producing 48,000 Gen 6 sheets/month.  The fab, which is operating a 16,000 phase 1 line currently and constructing phase 2 and phase 3 lines which are expected to be opening in 2022, cost ~$7.3b to build and will help BOE compete against both Samsung Display and LG Display for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone display business going forward.  While the local press says that phase 2 production will start in January, and BOE will increase shipments to 80m units next year, we expect mass production, based on a more conservative ramp to see an incremental 27m units from Chongqing in 2022, but we note that is at 100% yield, which we expect is far different than what is seen currently and what will be the case as the new Chongqing lines ramp up. 
On 11/08/21 we noted a more muted party at BOE, celebrating the company’s official inclusion into Apple’s iPhone display supply chain, something that had presented a number of challenges to the company since 2020.  When all three phases of the Chongqing fab are in operation and the even newer Gen 6 flexible OLED fab in Fuzhou is completed, BOE will have a combined Gen 6 capacity of 144,000 sheets/month, second only to Samsung Display, who remains the leader in the flexible OLED space, roughly double the capacity of LG Display’s small panel flexible OLED capacity and four times the flexible OLED capacity of any other Chinese small panel OLED producer.