Chinastar Prints OLED
Yesterday Chinastar (pvt), a subsidiary of TCL (000100.CH) ‘released’ two inkjet printed OLED displays, a 65” 8K and a 14” (4K?), a presage of what it hopes its most recent expansion plans will be part of. On 11/2/21 we noted that Chinastar had petitioned the Shenzhen government to acquire land adjacent to its T6/T7 production fab in order to scale production, some of which would be for OLED. With the release of these two IJP panels, it sets the tone for Chinastar to build at least one dedicated Gen 8 ink-jet printing line as part of that project, which would be China’s first IJP mass production line. TCL has been working with Japan’s JOLED (pvt), in which it took a 10.76% stake last year, to develop the technology for mass production. We target mass production for late 2023 to early 2024, but leave considerable room for delays, both from a process and a customer standpoint.
Chinastar is promoting IJP for OLED based on its belief that the process will allow for a cost/unit that is lower than that of the more typical OLED deposition process, with the expectation that OLED material utilization can be improved from ~60% to 90% using IJP and that the complexity of the process can be reduced, particularly not having to deposit materials in a vacuum. While the theoretical metrics for IJP deposition are certainly promising, moving from a pilot line to a high volume mass production environment has proven more difficult and time consuming than originally thought, and while IJP is used for OLED encapsulation, it is still being developed for material deposition. Samsung Display (pvt) is using IJP for process steps in its push toward mass production of QD/OLED displays and much work is being done on the deposition of quantum dots for a number of applications, but even Chinastar says it is studying the customer and product introduction schedules to determine the details of what IJP large panel mass production would look like.
JOLED itself does produce OLED displays ranging from 12.3” to 32” including some IJP models, although they tend to be for specialized applications. JOLED does run an IJP line, using IJP technology from Panasonic (6752.JP), one of the two (Sony (SNE)) was the other) companies whose OLED divisions were merged to form JOLED in 2015, however we expect Chinastar’s and TCL’s plans are to bring IJP OLED production to a more massive scale in order to compete with LG Display’s OLED TV domination. Again, in theory it makes sense, but the practical application of the technology on a more massive scale has taken years longer than originally expected, not only because of the hardware, but also due to the modification of materials necessary for IJP itself. In order to compete with vacuum OLED deposition processes, such soluble materials must exhibit the same characteristics as their evaporative counterparts, which has also proved challenging.
Chinastar is promoting IJP for OLED based on its belief that the process will allow for a cost/unit that is lower than that of the more typical OLED deposition process, with the expectation that OLED material utilization can be improved from ~60% to 90% using IJP and that the complexity of the process can be reduced, particularly not having to deposit materials in a vacuum. While the theoretical metrics for IJP deposition are certainly promising, moving from a pilot line to a high volume mass production environment has proven more difficult and time consuming than originally thought, and while IJP is used for OLED encapsulation, it is still being developed for material deposition. Samsung Display (pvt) is using IJP for process steps in its push toward mass production of QD/OLED displays and much work is being done on the deposition of quantum dots for a number of applications, but even Chinastar says it is studying the customer and product introduction schedules to determine the details of what IJP large panel mass production would look like.
JOLED itself does produce OLED displays ranging from 12.3” to 32” including some IJP models, although they tend to be for specialized applications. JOLED does run an IJP line, using IJP technology from Panasonic (6752.JP), one of the two (Sony (SNE)) was the other) companies whose OLED divisions were merged to form JOLED in 2015, however we expect Chinastar’s and TCL’s plans are to bring IJP OLED production to a more massive scale in order to compete with LG Display’s OLED TV domination. Again, in theory it makes sense, but the practical application of the technology on a more massive scale has taken years longer than originally expected, not only because of the hardware, but also due to the modification of materials necessary for IJP itself. In order to compete with vacuum OLED deposition processes, such soluble materials must exhibit the same characteristics as their evaporative counterparts, which has also proved challenging.
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