A patented, “revolutionary” OLED pixel architecture from Applied Materials will “bring the superior OLED displays found in high-end smartphones to tablets, PCs and eventually TVs”, the company says.
“OLED is the display technology of choice for the world’s leading smartphone manufacturers because it offers superior display quality, light and flexible form factors, and durability,” Applied Materials said.
However, it says OLED displays are “difficult to manufacture because the materials used to emit red, green and blue are fragile and ruined by any exposure to air or moisture. Until today, it has proven challenging to scale OLED display manufacturing to the larger glass panels used to make displays for tablets, PCs and TVs”.
The company describes Max OLED as a “breakthrough technology that deposits and encapsulates each pixel individually using a specially designed maskless process. Applied’s approach is precise, fast and superior at maintaining the purity of delicate OLED materials”.
Applied Materials Max OLED tech. Graphic from company website.
It said the Max OLED solution will make it easier to “scale OLED manufacturing from Gen 6 glass substrates to Gen 8 substrates, which are approximately two times larger, and beyond”.
A Gen 6 glass panel surface area is 2.78 square metres. A Gen 8 surface area is 5.5 square metres.
The Max OLED technology “deposits OLED materials in a new way that increases pixel brightness and resolution, reduces display energy consumption, and lengthens display lifetime”, Applied Materials said.
The orders and repeat orders are rolling in, the company claims, while also revealing that it will supply a Max OLED solution to Samsung Display, which manufactures OLED and QD-OLED panels. “Samsung Display will be bringing in an alpha system to assess this new technology,” it said.
“The consumer electronics industry has been waiting for a breakthrough that can bring OLED technology to the hundreds of millions of tablets, PCs and TVs sold each year,” said Dr Brian Shieh, Group Vice President and General Manager of Applied’s Display and Flexible Technology business.
