Old News? – Digitimes says LG Display building Gen 10.5 LCD fab
On Feb 7 we noted that not only had LG Display (LPL) made a decision concerning the construction of a large format fab, but had already begun construction on the shell. Today Digitimes reported that LG Display was constructing a Gen 10.5 TFT-LCD fab in Paju, South Korea. The Digitimes article goes on to state that the 1st phase of the project will be slated for completion in February 2018 and goes on to say that the factory will begin converting the Gen 10.5 factory to OLED by 2020.
We believe that some of this information is incorrect and that the facility is being built as an OLED production plant, however, as almost every OLED display production line has a backplane line, producing what is essentially the electronics that controls the display at the sub-pixel level, there might be some confusion as to the ultimate purpose of the fab. To simplify matters, we note below some of our expectations for the fab from our previous note:
We believe the fab will be based on oxide backplanes, at least for the large panel displays, and will likely have a capacity of 15,000 sheets/month (two phases), but we believe the configuration of the lines is still under development as there are a number of Gen 10 size configurations. We expect a 2880 x 3080 substrate size, as it lends itself well to both 60” and 65” panels, but if small panel displays are also being produced, the substrate size might be different across the fab, or on a line by line basis.
As there has been no OLED fab using such large substrates, the deposition equipment will have to be custom designed. We believe the preliminary design work is being done by YAS (pvt), a Korean tool vendor that is known for linear deposition tools that allow for a variety of source scan modes, and given the unusually large size of the substrate, this will be a significant consideration.
Our OLED industry model and specifically the LG Display P10 fab were conservative, assuming a Gen 9 mixed use (OLED & LCD) fab. Our assumption of 15,000 sheets/month is based on that mixed use assumption. If the fab is fully dedicated to OLED production, the ultimate capacity could be larger than 15,000 sheets/month, but we maintain that assumption until we can confirm different plans from LGD. Our original estimation of the completion of phase one of P10 was for June 2018, which seems to be in line with construction plans, but we would not be surprised to see some delays in start-up, given the unique nature of the fab.
While initially, Apple (AAPL) will be forced to use Samsung Display (pvt) for its OLED mobile device production, this new fab, should it follow the path of both rigid and flexible OLED lines, would become an alternative source for small panel flexible OLED by late 2018, and would help LG Display maintain its primary display provider position with Apple regardless of their transition to OLED displays.
We believe LG Display is still making decisions concerning the fab, such as the exact format, as we believe there is a chance that there will be other line configurations aside from the Gen 10.5 lines, and as such we have built into our model two Gen 10.5 lines and a single Gen 5 line for small format OLED production. This would give LG Display the option to add small panel OLED capacity without having to convert existing LCD facilities at a later date, and could be used for specialized products outside of the normal OLED smartphone. Regardless of the final formats, the new fab will give LG Display the capacity to further expand its OLED TV display production although we note that OLED remains a relatively small portion of LG Display’s total capacity.
We believe that some of this information is incorrect and that the facility is being built as an OLED production plant, however, as almost every OLED display production line has a backplane line, producing what is essentially the electronics that controls the display at the sub-pixel level, there might be some confusion as to the ultimate purpose of the fab. To simplify matters, we note below some of our expectations for the fab from our previous note:
We believe the fab will be based on oxide backplanes, at least for the large panel displays, and will likely have a capacity of 15,000 sheets/month (two phases), but we believe the configuration of the lines is still under development as there are a number of Gen 10 size configurations. We expect a 2880 x 3080 substrate size, as it lends itself well to both 60” and 65” panels, but if small panel displays are also being produced, the substrate size might be different across the fab, or on a line by line basis.
As there has been no OLED fab using such large substrates, the deposition equipment will have to be custom designed. We believe the preliminary design work is being done by YAS (pvt), a Korean tool vendor that is known for linear deposition tools that allow for a variety of source scan modes, and given the unusually large size of the substrate, this will be a significant consideration.
Our OLED industry model and specifically the LG Display P10 fab were conservative, assuming a Gen 9 mixed use (OLED & LCD) fab. Our assumption of 15,000 sheets/month is based on that mixed use assumption. If the fab is fully dedicated to OLED production, the ultimate capacity could be larger than 15,000 sheets/month, but we maintain that assumption until we can confirm different plans from LGD. Our original estimation of the completion of phase one of P10 was for June 2018, which seems to be in line with construction plans, but we would not be surprised to see some delays in start-up, given the unique nature of the fab.
While initially, Apple (AAPL) will be forced to use Samsung Display (pvt) for its OLED mobile device production, this new fab, should it follow the path of both rigid and flexible OLED lines, would become an alternative source for small panel flexible OLED by late 2018, and would help LG Display maintain its primary display provider position with Apple regardless of their transition to OLED displays.
We believe LG Display is still making decisions concerning the fab, such as the exact format, as we believe there is a chance that there will be other line configurations aside from the Gen 10.5 lines, and as such we have built into our model two Gen 10.5 lines and a single Gen 5 line for small format OLED production. This would give LG Display the option to add small panel OLED capacity without having to convert existing LCD facilities at a later date, and could be used for specialized products outside of the normal OLED smartphone. Regardless of the final formats, the new fab will give LG Display the capacity to further expand its OLED TV display production although we note that OLED remains a relatively small portion of LG Display’s total capacity.
Figure 1 - Fab P10 under construction at LG Display in Paju - Source etnews.com
Figure 2 - LG Display Raw Capacity - Source: SCMR LLC, OLED-A, Company Data
RSS Feed