Friday, May 1, 2015

OLED Encapsulation: technological introduction and market status | OLED-Info

OELD-info has a very good  technological introduction and market review on OLED encapsulation, whis you can read here. Check it out and read about the main players of ALD OEMs in this field as published by OLED-info:

OLED-Info
  • Vacuum Polymer Technology: developed at Vitex and bought by Samsung in 2010, this is the technology currently used by Samsung. It is a multi-layer barrier that is relatively slow to deposit as it requires several stages (SDC recently managed to reduce them from 6 to 3) and so Samsung is looking to replace it with a more cost effective solution.
  • LG's Faceseal: LG's own encapsulation technology, this is a a multi-layered organic and in-organic film. LG Display currently uses Faceseal for both flexible OLED display and lighting panels.
  • Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD): ALD can be used to quickly and efficiently deposit barrier films on flexible substrates. Several companies are developing OLED encapsulation systems based on ALD. One example is Veeco with their FAST-ALD tech (which they acquired in 2013 for $185 million) which is being evaluation by Samsung. Other OLED ALD developers include Beneq and Encapsulix.
  • Ink Jet Printing: While ink-jet is usually associated with micro-scale patterning, it can also be used to accurately and efficiently deposit encapsulation layers. In November 2014 Kateeva launched an Ink Jet Printing based Encapsulation system, and already shipped a mass-scale system - presumably to Samsung Display. 
  • PECVD: Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) is another deposition technology that can be adapted for encapsulation barrier films. In 2015 Aixtron acquired PlasmaSi, a PECVD OLED encapsulation developer - and plans to incorporate those systems into its OLED deposition clusters.
  • UniversalBarrier: This technology, developed by Universal Display (UDC), can be used to deposit single-layer encapsulation films. According to the latest update from UDC, the technology is not yet ready for mass production, but it is already being evaluation by Samsung Display.
  • Flexible glass: Yes, it is possible to make flexible glass - which is a great barrier, but still not as durable as thin-film encapsulation materials. Corning for example is promoting its Willow Glass as a possible flexible glass encapsulation (and substrate) technology.

1 comment: