flexible display screens ready for mass production brands

Founded by a Stanford PhD graduate, Royole has designed and is starting to mass-produce a super-thin flexible screen that could be used in everything from t-shirts to portable speakers.

It"s the stuff of science fiction, and plenty of tech trade shows — a screen so thin and flexible that it can be rolled up into a cylinder as small as a cigarette or hung on a wall like wallpaper.

Royole just opened a new factory in China that is already mass producing the displays, and the company is working with partners to get them installed in everything from t-shirts to automobiles to smartphones.

Royole"s screens are based on OLED technology, in which the lighting elements are built into the display itself. Unlike the OLED screens that are in some higher-end televisions, which are typically placed on a rigid base like glass, the lighting elements in Royole"s screens are placed on a flexible plastic base, so they can bend or roll up.

"The cool thing here is that we"re not limited by the form factor of the surface," said Liu, who founded Royole with some friends from Stanford after graduating from there with a PhD in electrical engineering. "They could be anywhere."

Royole, which was founded in 2012 and has raised $1.1 billion in funding, just brought its new factory online in June. The plant will be able to produce up to 50 million panels a year once it"s at full capacity, Liu said. That could help it feed a potentially burgeoning market for bendable gadgets.

Researchers have been trying to develop flexible screen technology since at least the early 1970s — first in the form of monochrome displays that were intended to replace printed pages, and then, much later, in the form of color ones that might replace the screens in TV or portable devices.

For much of the last decade, display makers including Samsung and LG have been showing off their flexible OLED screens and prototype of products made with them at trade shows.

Samsung"s Galaxy Round, a relatively obscure smartphone that came out that year, was one of the first gadgets that used a flexible screen way back in 2013. Because the display was placed behind a fixed plate of glass, so you couldn"t really tell that it was bendable. The only clue was that the front of the phone was concave.

Other smartphones since the Galaxy Round have also employed flexible displays, including the LG G Flex and the Edge versions of the Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Note lines. More recently, the screens have started to make their way into even mainstream devices. Apple"s iPhone X, for example, has a flexible display behind its famously notched screen.

They were "a disappointing application of what that the technology could do," said Raymond Soneira, CEO of DisplayMate, a consulting firm for the display and TV industries.

Neither businesses nor consumers were ready for bendable or foldable gadgets when the first flexible displays started rolling off production lines five years ago, analysts said. Electronics makers generally hadn"t set up their supply chains to accommodate them or figured out how they might be able to take advantage of the screens" properties in new products. Apps hadn"t been written specifically for devices with bendable screens. And nobody had laid the groundwork for new kinds of flexible gadgets by marketing them to consumers.

Things may be different now. Next year, Samsung will reportedly introduce a phone with a foldable screen that"s built around its flexible display technology. Apple reportedly has a foldable phone in the works, too.

"You can"t make [phones] much bigger … and have them be carried by most consumers," Soneira said. "So you"ve got to move up to foldable, even rollable screens."

The release of foldable screen phones and other gadgets from major manufacturers will likely spur developers to start making apps designed specifically around those features. It"s also likely to inspire demand for other devices that take advantage of the properties of bendable screens.

Flexible screens will likely get their start by replacing other screens in devices we already recognize, including not just smartphones, but computer monitors and laptop computers, allowing manufacturers to make models that are slightly more innovative or resilient, said Ryan Martin, a principal analyst at ABI Research. But eventually, manufacturers are likely to get a lot more creative with them.

A flexible display "changes the realm of design as well as design thinking," Martin said. "You"re no longer confined to the four corners of a screen. You can make things more abstract."

At CES, the giant electronics trade show held in Las Vegas every January, LG has shown off a prototype for a car dashboard in which the speedometer, tachometer and other other gauges and buttons are displayed virtually on flexible screens that could be shaped to the contours of a car"s interior.

Although the company is going up against some of the biggest electronics companies around in LG and Samsung, Royole"s got several advantages, Liu said. Its displays are built on its own proprietary technology for which it has filed numerous patents, he said. That technology allows it to build screens that are a tenth as thick as those of competitors.

What"s more, because it"s using a different methodology for building its screens, it was able to get its factory up and running for about $1 billion, which is far less than what it would cost its competitors, he said.

The first devices with Royole"s screens should start showing up later this year. The company plans to sell T-shirts and hats with its flexible displays built in. Soon thereafter, it expects marketers to start using its screens to display advertisements in elevators, airports, shopping malls, and other places.

From there, the screens should start making its way into other products, both traditional and new, Liu said. When purchased in volume, they should be competitive in price to other types of displays, he said.

Royole recently began the mass production stage at its "Flexible Display Campus," the company"s division dedicated to creating innovative malleable display technologies. The company unveiled its first flexible display panel in 2014 with limited specifications, followed by its first full-color "flexible+" display in 2018. Now, the company has begun mass production of scalable, sizeable, flexible displays with full color gamuts and standard aspect ratios.

Companies can request panels through Royole"s sales inquiry system, which involves sending an email with necessary information such as size, quantity, and other specifications. According to Royole, its displays now boast a thickness of just 0.1mm and a peak bend radius of 1mm, meaning the displays can functionally be bent into a full circle, if desired.

A report from ETNews claims that Samsung Display is ready to expand its foldable-display business and start selling to companies other than Samsung Electronics" phone division. Flexible panels were previously exclusive to Samsung"s phone division, but the report says Samsung Display plans to sell 1 million panels this year in the open market. ETNews quotes a source saying "multiple Chinese smartphones markets" are working with Samsung and plan to ship devices in the second half of 2021.

A million panels isn"t a huge supply compared to the ~350 million smartphones sold annually, but that is about the size of the foldable market in these early days. Canalys" last numbers said 1.74 million foldables were sold from September 2019 to June 2020, which represents the first generation of foldables, before the launch of the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Samsung hopes to see that number grow a lot in 2021, with ETNews reporting Samsung Display will supply 10 million foldable displays to the phone division.

It doesn"t sound like the third parties buying from Samsung will have a lot of wiggle room in terms of form factor. According to the report, Samsung is supplying two types of displays: one that folds across the horizontal axis like the Galaxy Z Flip, and one that folds across the vertical axis like the Galaxy Z Fold. The industry isn"t quite sure what a flexible display smartphone should look like, and at trade shows, various companies have pitched all sorts of wild form factors. There are concepts for rollable display smartphones, outward-folding displays like the Huawei Mate X, and tri-folding smartphones that fold up like a wallet or a brochure. It doesn"t sound like Samsung will be humoring any of those form factors just yet.

This report signals an end of Samsung"s exclusivity period on its foldable display technology, which has been an exception to the way Samsung normally does business. Samsung Display and the Galaxy phone division are both under the "Samsung Electronics" label, but often the various divisions of Samsung treat each other like any other customer. If your goal is "sell as many phones as possible," it would be a good strategy to keep any special technologies in house, but if you"re focused on making as much money as possible, it"s better to sell to the entire industry. As a whole conglomerate, Samsung makes more money selling iPhone parts to Apple than it does selling Galaxy Phones to consumers. We recently saw a good example of this "components-first" approach with the rise of faster-refresh-rate OLED smartphone displays, where OnePlus, Google, and others were using Samsung-made 90Hz OLED displays a generation before Samsung. Advertisement

The foldable displays are special, though. Samsung Display says it invested six years and $130 million in R&D to bring foldable displays to market, and so far, the phone division has had exclusive access to the technology. Presumably, the plan was that Samsung Electronics would have a huge head start over the competition and would be the only company selling Foldable phones for a few years. Samsung"s plans didn"t work out, though. According to Korean prosecutors, Samsung"s foldable display technology was stolen in 2018 and sold to "two Chinese companies" that have never been officially named. A report from Nikkei Asia pegs China"s biggest display manufacturer, BOE, as a recipient of the stolen display technology, and that certainly seems plausible given that BOE is the closest thing Samsung has to competition in the foldable-display market.

BOE foldable displays power Samsung"s two biggest foldable rivals, the Huawei Mate X and the Moto Razr. Like we listed above, there are plenty of other companies that bring prototype foldable smartphones to trade shows, but as far as products that are actually brave enough to come to market, there are devices powered by Samsung and BOE and maybe one or two tiny boutique outlets like Royale. ETNews still qualifies Samsung as the only "mass market" flexible-display panel provider, a fine conclusion given that other devices seem to mostly be paper launches with either minimal distribution or constant stock problems. If you want to zoom in on the extremely small foldables segment, a report from industry tracker Display Supply Chain Consultants recently put Samsung"s 2020 foldable smartphone market share at 88 percent.

Ladies and gentlemen, our dreams of flexible digital newspapers are nearly within reach: LG just announced that it has begun mass production of a 6-inch, 1024 x 768 e-paper screen that can bend by up to 40 degrees. We haven"t been able to find a press release, but several Korean publications are reporting that the plastic-based screen is shipping to Chinese manufacturers to build e-readers right away, and devices based on the technology could be available in Europe as soon as early April. LG is boasting that at 0.7mm thick, the entire display is as thin as a protective film for a phone"s screen. According to the reports, LG conducted 1.5-meter (about 5 foot) drop tests with the screen and smacked it with a rubber mallet with no ill effect. We"re waiting for the other shoe (or e-reader) to drop, but that sounds positively fantastic. Maybe we"ll get some bendable batteries to go with the screen, some day.

During the summer it was my pleasure to work with two interns from local universities. As part of their instruction I asked each of them to pick a topic of their choice, and to generate a patent landscape report on the area. For each project the interns were asked to research the technical aspects of their topic, suggest a patent search strategy for identifying documents, reduce their collections to remove family duplicates, cleanup various data fields, categorize the collection into a variety of facets, conduct relevant analytics on the data, and finally generate both a written report and a PowerPoint presentation to summarize their results. I am excited to publish the first of these projects produced by Riley Collins who did his project on Flexible Electronic Displays. So without further ado here"s Riley"s project:

Unlike traditional flat panel displays OLEDs, one of the more popular types of flexible electronic displays are solid-state devices composed of thin films of organic molecules that create light with the application of electricity. OLEDs can provide brighter, crisper displays on electronic devices and use less power than conventional light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or liquid crystal displays (LCDs) used according to HowStuffWorks.com.  Using glass substrates, flexible technology OLED‘s utilizes plastic substrates, which allow the display to bend and twist. Flexible OLED‘s only need one sheet of substrate while LCD‘s require two and a separate backlight. Because of this, OLED‘s are able to be paper thin and lightweight, a perfect candidate for mobile phones and wearable electronics. The challenge for manufacturers currently is allowing the device to be repeatedly deformed while keeping the internals intact. Currently, electronic flexible displays are being used to make curved phones and televisions. This is possible because while the display may be “flexible”, the internal components remain fixed. Figure 1 shows a diagram of the layers in different types of displays. Samsung refers to their flexible OLED display as FAMOLED.

Electronic paper displays are the oldest type of flexible display. They differ in that they reflect light and have a wider viewing angle. E-paper is used predominately in E-readers and signage because text can be read in direct sunlight without fading. Similar to flexible OLED and LCD, it also uses plastic substrates, allowing display to bend like paper. E-paper displays are not ideal for phones and tablets because they have a very low refresh rate, ghosting problems, and are yet to be mass-produced in color.

As flexible displays become cheaper to manufacture we will likely see new functions of this technology. While curved devices are the first to hit the market, recent patent filings by top display manufacturers suggest that foldable, bendable, and rollable devices are not that far away. Foldable displays will likely come first to accommodate the growing demand for larger displays and the need for portability. As the wearable device market grows, bendable displays could be used to wraparound an individual’s wrist. Finally, displays that can be rolled up may be used in televisions and eventually a tubular device with a retractable roll out display.

Some benefits of flexible displays are better durability, lighter weight, thinner dimensions, and unique software commands. The use of a plastic substrate and the ability to flex locally when dropped makes the device less likely to crack, saving the users the trouble of having their screen replaced or being forced to buy a new device. Flexible devices will also be lighter and thinner than their rigid counterparts because they use plastic instead of glass. The ability to deform the device may allow the user to access a set of commands in their devices user interface. For example, when the device is folded it will go into sleep mode.

Demand for flexible displays is on the verge of a sharp increase. According to a new IHS report, “Global Flexible Display Technology and Market Forecast” (Figure 2 above). It is estimated that the flexible display market will grow to $1.1 billion in 2015 and will continue to develop at rate of 226% to $42 billion by the end of 2020. Units sold are projected to rise from 3.2 million in 2013 to 792 million in 2020. This means that in 2020, flexible display market will have captured 13% of the total display market. Even though smartphones with flexible displays have not yet achieved their desired potential, it is probable that they will soon capture the market by storm.

The search was started by locating as many Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) codes that referred to flexible displays.. A sample of highly relevant documents were used to cross-reference and make sure that no CPC codes were left out.. The codes used were are:

OLEDA family reduction was conducted, but all unique US application numbers were retained. Foreign inventions were reduced to one invention per extended family. This list of CPC codes produced 2156 documents. After manually sorting the files, 177 were on E-Paper, and 1218 were Flexible OLED/LCD technologies. Many of the relevant documents included the key words flex*, deform, roll*, curve, bend* or bent, fold*, and a flexible or plastic substrate.

The objective of preforming this research is to complete an analysis of the Flexible Display IP landscape and assess the position of leading display manufacturers. According to the total number of applications by publication year, the patent filings for flexible displays are increasing at an exponential rate. They increased from 48 publications in 2010 to 566 in 2014/2015. This represents more than a 100% increase on average each year. Even more impressive is that almost 60% of the filings between 2010 and 2015 have came in the past 18 months. An initial look at the top companies by publications shows Samsung with the most at 271, LG with 97, and SEL with 85. Trailing behind are Creator Technology, Nokia, Apple, and Blackberry. Samsung and LG are likely to have the most filings because they are the only companies on this list that manufacturers portable devices and displays. Flexible displays are a relatively new technological field and because of this, the majority of the publications have not gone on to grant yet. It remains to be seen how much legal coverage will be given to these companies. The requirements for protection may still be uncertain and this could lead to lawsuits down the road.

When looking at the patent filings by type, the display component, electronic device, and display panel publications all increased sharply after 2013. Display panel filings surpassed electronic device filings in 2014/2015. Samsung is the clear leader in flexible display panel with 95 publications in 2014/2015 alone. Comparatively, LG and SEL both produced slightly more than 30 in this same time. The story is very similar for the display components except instead of SEL, Nokia trails slightly behind LG. The device patents have increased considerably since 2013 with Samsung going from 11 to 49, LG from 5 to 32, and Apple from 4 to 19. Blackberry has also increased their device patents steadily. The findings suggest that devices are already being specially made utilizing this new display technology. Companies such as Apple and Nokia who have few patents on the flexible display are perhaps exploring future licensing deals if they plan on releasing a device that contains a flexible display.

Samsung, SEL, Creator Technology, and Philips have most of their filings on the display, while LG, Nokia, Apple, Blackberry, Pantech, and Motorola have more patents on a device that uses a flexible display. Some other display-oriented companies include Sony, Sharp, ITRI, Toshiba, Universal Display Corporation, Fujifilm, Kodak, AU Optronics, and Boe Technology. To emphasize how much of a force the top two companies in this landscape are, a chart is included of Samsung and LG combined vs. all other companies. In 2014/2015 the top two combined surpassed all remaining companies in number of publications with 276 vs. 248. This shows the push that the leading display manufacturers are making to protect their intellectual property before this technology is mass-produced.

Charts and graphs associated with these analysis as well as a few other views on the data can be found in a PowerPoint presentation summarizing this research. The presentation can be downloaded by clicking on the following link: Flexible Electonic Displays Patent Analysis.

In January 2013 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Samsung showcased prototypes of their flexible YOUM brand displays. In October of 2013, they released their first product using a flexible display. It appears that Samsung abandoned the YOUM branding because the Galaxy Round now uses a Flexible Super AMOLED display (FAMOLED). The Korean company then released the Galaxy note edge in September 2013. The note edge utilizes the curve to display information on the side of the display. Samsung’s latest installment of a flexible display device was the Galaxy S6 Edge in March 2015. The S6 differentiates itself from the note edge because it has two curved edges. Samsung announced in August of 2015 that they will be investing $3 billion to expand their OLED plant in Vietnam.

LG showed one of its 6 inch flexible prototypes in June of 2013 at the Society for information Display (SID). They then announced the release of the G Flex, a curved phone, shortly after CES in January 2014. The new and improved G Flex 2 would be released a year later at CES. In a private showroom at CES 2015, LG unveiled a prototype phone with a dual edge display, similar to the Galaxy S6 edge, which was released a few months later. In June 2015, at SID, LG released an 18 inch rollable display prototype at SID. LG has plans to make a 60 inch version by 2017. In July 2015, LG announced that it was investing $905 million into a 6th generation flexible OLED production line in South Korea. The project is said to finish in 2017 and will allow LG to meet the increasing demand for flexible displays in phones and wearable devices.

Nokia and SEL have released a two 5.9 inch foldable OLED prototypes at SID 2014. One of which folds like a book and the other with a tri-fold design. With Nokia and SEL partnering together, a functional foldable device may be released in the near future. http://news.oled-display.net/nokia-showcase-three-fold-oled-displays/

Originally a spin off from Philips Electronics, Polymer Vision was acquired by Wilstron Corp in 2009. The original Polymer Vision patent portfolio is now owned by the Netherlands company Creator Technology. Polymer Vision was trying to release a product called the readius which is essentially an E-reader with a 5 inch roll out display. Creator Technology may become a force in the flexible display industry, especially in regards to roll out displays. http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/03/wistron-reportedly-closes-polymer-vision/

In August 2014, Au Optronics released a 5 inch flexible AMOLED panel at a trade show. They also released a similar prototype in August 2015 that can detect how the user bends it. http://www.androidauthority.com/galaxy-s6-and-zenfone-2-top-charging-test-636708/

Boe Technology has recently created a prototype 9.55 inch flexible display that can be rolled into a tube, they have also created a 55 inch UHD flexible AMOLED display, the largest of its kind. Boe Technology also has an ongoing partnership with Universal Display Corporation. http://company.boe.com/portal/en/chuangxinkeji/boechuangxin/wenzhangxiangqing/dynamic/pecbwd264.html

ITRI is using its FlexUpTM technology to create foldable and rollable AMOLED panels. They displayed some of their latest innovations in August, 2015 at Touch Taiwan. https://www.itri.org.tw/eng/Content/NewsLetter/contents.aspx?&SiteID=1&MmmID=617731531241750114&SSize=10&SYear=2015&Keyword=&MSID=654530737004101325

There are still challenges to overcome before truly flexible devices hit the market, as the machinery behind the display is not meant to be bent. While plastic has its advantages, it is not as good as glass when it comes to encapsulating the thin-film-transistor and other components from moisture, oxygen, and other unwanted particles. Phone technology need to become tough enough to handle the stress of daily flexing over an extended period of time. Another barrier of a flexible device is the battery. Batteries are typically rigid in nature and until these batteries can be manipulated to flex, the notion of a bendable phone is unlikely. Similar to the battery, the silicon circuit board and its components are also not malleable. Device manufacturers will have to find cost effective alternatives to these problems before these new gadgets hit the shelves.

Samsung and LG are likely to be the first manufacturers of the next generation of flexible display devices. They have both proven that they have the expertise to create flexible display devices, as evidenced by the S6 edge and G Flex2. Nokia, Apple, and Blackberry are likely the next manufacturers to produce a flexible device based on their elevated number of patents.  However, they will likely have to license the display technology in order to incorporate their devices. There is currently a need for lighter and thinner devices that are extremely portable and durable, a flexible device that can change its form for convenience appears to be the solution. It is simply a matter of time before manufacturers cross these last barriers and release a new wave of flexible devices that will flood the market.

OLED is an emerging display technology that enables beautiful and efficient displays and lighting panels. OLEDs are already being used in smartphones, laptops, wearables, tablets and TVs, and many of OLEDs are flexible ones.

A flexible OLED is based on a flexible substrate (usually polyimide). The first generation of OLEDs produced on these were not really flexible from the user perspective. The device maker bends the displays, or curves it - but the final user is not able to actually bend the device. These first-gen flexible OLEDs are adopted many premium smartphones, for example the Samsung edge-type Galaxy phones or Apple"s latest iPhones. A plastic-based OLED has several advantages especially in mobile devices - the displays are lighter, thinner and more durable compared to glass based displays.

Second generation flexible OLED displays can be bent by the user - these can be used for example to create foldable smartphones - the first range of which started shipping in 2019. Rollable OLEDs are also now entering the market for both TVs and smartphones.

While several companies (including Samsung, LG, BOE and others) are producing OLED displays, it is not straightforward to find a good and reliable supply of these displays.

If you are interested in buying a flexible OLED panel for your project or device, look no further. Our OLED Marketplace offers several flexible OLEDs, which can be ordered through us with ease.

3In contrast to the standard flat screen displays used in several electrical gadgets, a flexible display or bendable display is an electronic visual display manufactured by flexible display brands. Several consumer electronics firms have expressed enthusiasm in using this display technologies in e-readers, smart phones, and other electronic goods in recent times. Such screens may be rolled up like a scroll without distorting the image or text. Electronic ink, Gyricon, Organic LCD, and OLED are among the technologies used to create a bendable display.

With the flat panel screen having been extensively used for more than 40 years, many desirable advances in display technology have been made, with the goal of creating lighter, thinner products that are simpler to carry and store. Scientists and engineers think that flexible flat panel display innovation has a large commercial possibility in the future, thanks to recent advancements in flexible display technique.

Flexible displays offered by the flexible display brands are still somewhat costly as contrasted to their rigid equivalents, and visual quality is frequently sacrificed. When the screen is bent at a specific angle, this is extremely evident. However, in comparison to standard displays, flexible screens have a shorter lifespan.

Current models should endure a long time for the majority of users’ demands. However, most flexible display brands still require tackling this issue, particularly given the rising pricing of flexible display devices.

Thepointed that this market was valued atUSD 8.94 Billion in 2019. As the demand keeps growing across continents, Verified Market Research analysts found that it will reach a valuation ofUSD 67.14 Billion by 2027. This jump can be considered to be an equivalent of aCAGR of 28.7% from 2020 to 2027.Click to download its sample report containing details about factors responsible for this elliptical rise.

views itself as a supplier of intelligent vertical systems underpinned by premium display technology as an optoelectronics specialist. The company’s vast expertise, innovative skills, and corporate sustainability set it apart and set it out from the competition.

In terms of display as a networking and communication interface, AUO offers a wide range of alternatives in retail, healthcare, transport, and other industries, with the goal of forming eco-systems with partnerships across all sectors and ushering the world into a new smarter lifestyle.

is critical to advancement in both the sectors it shapes and the planet it shares. They use materials science to create life-changing technology. They are at the core of how the world communicates, performs, educates, and lives because of their technical and production competence, insatiable curiosity, and devotion to meaningful creativity.

Through its novel panel-centric and vertical integration operation style,unifies the product production supply chain and offers clients with full solutions. Innolux has a clear emphasis on handling technology and elements, as well as superior administration skills, in addition to a solid TFT-LCD basis and manufacturing quality. Innolux develops standards, sets market trends, and offers a comprehensive product portfolio and services to their suppliers’ clients in the data and electronic goods industries. ​

Japan Display Incorporateddevelops, designs, manufactures, and sells displays where a user interface is required to transmit a large amount of data in a short amount of time and to a worldwide market. They design engaging settings that go above and beyond the ordinary, enrich people’s lives, and stir their hearts.

In the automobile, pharmaceutical, and industrial areas, as well as individual gadgets such as smartphones, tablets, and wearables, we develop innovative solutions by using their advanced technological expertise, production capability, and quality.

LG Displayis the world’s top inventor of display technologies, comprising TFT-LCD and OLED screens, as well as the worldwide leader in OLED lighting. The firm makes display screens in a variety of dimensions and standards for usage in televisions, laptop computers, desktop workstations, and other purposes, such as tablets and mobile phones. It also manufactures OLED light screens for the automobile and interior decorating industries.

Visionoxis the globe’s renowned provider of sophisticated display systems that are both integrated and interactive. The company’s objective is to lead China’s OLED industry via technical innovation” and its ambition is to “push limits to enrich the experience of eyesight.

Visionox concentrates on OLED technologies and commercial growth, with a dedication to independent innovation and maintaining China’s OLED sector competitive. Visionox offers clients a high-quality viewing experience while also taking into account China’s supply-side fundamental reforms.

As phones, tablets and even laptops move away from typical rigid slab-like constructions, display panels that can withstand the potential punishment of form-factors that are intended to fold (or worn, or maybe even roll up) regularly may become a component of demand.

BOE is one company that may stand to supply this need. A panel it has developed that has just won a Beijing Science and Technology Progress Special Award may be an example of the display material of the future. It is called R5 200,000, where R5 refers to its spec of a bending radius as low as 5mm and 200000 refers to the number of times it can withstand being folded to this extent.

Then again, this R5 200,000 is an outward-facing panel, which means its active (image-showing) side is still visible as it goes through all these folds, whereas most of the flexible-display devices of today do so in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, the company has reportedly announced that this same product is ready for manufacture at a commercial scale.

It will be no stranger to distributing it, either: BOE"s flexible AMOLED displays reportedly accounted for 20.3% of all shipments in this market since their own transition to mass production. Those panels have been bought by companies such as Huawei, LG, Motorola, Nubia and OPPO thus far. Therefore, R5 200.000 may see just as much success in the near future.

Kateeva’s YIELDjet system (pictured here) is a massive version of an inkjet printer. Large glass or plastic substrate sheets are placed on a long, wide platform. A head with custom nozzles moves back and forth, across the substrate, coating it with OLED and other materials.

Based on years of Institute research, MIT spinout Kateeva has developed an “inkjet printing” system that could cut manufacturing costs enough to pave the way for mass-producing flexible and large-screen OLED displays.

Flexible smartphones and color-saturated television displays were some highlights at this year’s Consumer Electronics Showcase, held in January in Las Vegas.

Many of those displays were made using organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs — semiconducting films about 100 nanometers thick, made of organic compounds and sandwiched between two electrodes, that emit light in response to electricity. This allows each individual pixel of an OLED screen to emit red, green, and blue, without a backlight, to produce more saturated color and use less energy. The film can also be coated onto flexible, plastic substrates.

But there’s a reason why these darlings of the showroom are not readily available on shelves: They’re not very cost-effective to make en masse. Now, MIT spinout Kateeva has developed an “inkjet printing” system for OLED displays — based on years of Institute research — that could cut manufacturing costs enough to pave the way for mass-producing flexible and large-screen models.

In doing so, Kateeva aims to “fix the last ‘Achilles’ heel’ of the OLED-display industry — which is manufacturing,” says Kateeva co-founder and scientific advisor Vladimir Bulovic, the Fariborz Maseeh Professor of Emerging Technology, who co-invented the technology.

Called YIELDjet, Kateeva’s technology platform is a massive version of an inkjet printer. Large glass or plastic substrate sheets are placed on a long, wide platform. A component with custom nozzles moves rapidly, back and forth, across the substrate, coating it with OLED and other materials — much as a printer drops ink onto paper.

An OLED production line consists of many processes, but Kateeva has developed tools for two specific areas — each using the YIELDjet platform. The first tool, called YIELDjet FLEX, was engineered to enable thin-film encapsulation (TFE). TFE is the process that gives thinness and flexibility to OLED devices; Kateeva hopes flexible displays produced by YIELDjet FLEX will hit the shelves by the end of the year.

The second tool, which will debut later this year, aims to cut costs and defects associated with patterning OLED materials onto substrates, in order to make producing 55-inch screens easier.

By boosting yields, as well as speeding up production, reducing materials, and reducing maintenance time, the system aims to cut manufacturing costs by about 50 percent, says Kateeva co-founder and CEO Conor Madigan SM ’02 PhD ’06. “That combination of improving the speed, improving the yield, and improving the maintenance is what mass-production manufacturers want. Plus, the system is scalable, which is really important as the display industry shifts to larger substrate sizes,” he says.

Traditional TFE processing methods enclose the substrate in a vacuum chamber, where a vapor of the encapsulating film is sprayed onto the substrate through a metal stencil. This process is slow and expensive — primarily because of wasted material — and requires stopping the machine frequently for cleaning. There are also issues with defects, as the coating that hits the chamber walls and stencil can potentially flake off and fall onto the substrate in between adding layers.

But moisture, and even some air particles, can sneak into the chamber, which is deadly to OLEDs: When electricity hits OLEDs contaminated with water and air particles, the resulting chemical reactions reduce the OLEDs’ quality and lifespan. Any displays contaminated during manufacturing are discarded and, to make up for lost yield, companies boost retail prices. Only two companies now sell OLED television displays, with 55-inch models selling for $3,000 to $4,000 — about $1,000 to $3,000 more than their 55-inch LCD and LED counterparts.

YIELDjet FLEX aims to solve many TFE issues. A key innovation is encasing the printer in a nitrogen chamber, cutting exposure to oxygen and moisture, as well as cutting contamination with particles — notorious for diminishing OLED yields — by 10 times over current methods that use vacuum chambers. “Low-particle nitrogen is the best low-cost, inert environment you can use for OLED manufacturing,” Madigan says.

In its TFE process, the YIELDjet precisely coats organic films over the display area as part of the TFE structure. The organic layer flattens and smoothes the surface to provide ideal conditions for depositing the subsequent layers in the TFE structure. Depositing onto a smooth, clean surface dramatically improves the quality of the TFE structure, enabling high yields and reliability, even after repeated flexing and bending, Madigan says.

Kateeva’s other system offers an improvement over the traditional vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE) technique — usually somewhere in the middle of the production line — that uses shadow masks (thin metal squares with stenciled patterns) to drop red, green, and blue OLED materials onto a substrate.

This isn’t necessarily bad for making small, smartphone screens: “If a substrate sheet with, say, 100 small displays on its surface has five defects, you may toss five, and all the rest are perfect,” Madigan explains. And smaller shadow masks are more reliable.

But manufacturers start to lose money when they’re tossing one or two large-screen displays due to particle contamination or defects across the substrate.

Kateeva’s system, which, like its TFE system, is enclosed in a nitrogen chamber, precisely positions substrates — large enough for six 55-inch displays — beneath print heads, which contain hundreds of nozzles. These nozzles are tuned to deposit tiny droplets of OLED material in exact locations to create the display’s pixels. “Doing this over three layers removes the need for shadow masks at larger scales,” Madigan says.

As with its YIELDjet FLEX system, Madigan says this YIELDjet product for OLED TV displays can help manufacturers save more than 50 percent over traditional methods. In January, Kateeva partnered with Sumitomo, a leading OLED-materials supplier, to further optimize the system for volume production.

The idea for Kateeva started in the early 2000s at MIT. Over several years, Madigan, Bulovic, Schmidt, Chen, and Leblanc had become involved in a partnership with Hewlett-Packard (HP) on a project to make printable electronics.

They had developed a variety of methods for manufacturing OLEDs — which Madigan had been studying since his undergraduate years at Princeton University. Other labs at that time were trying to make OLEDs more energy efficient, or colorful, or durable. “But we wanted to do something completely different that would revolutionize the industry, because that’s what we should be doing in a place like MIT,” Madigan says.

A few years before, Bulovic had cut his teeth in the startup scene with QD Vision — which is currently developing quantum-dot technology for LED television displays — and was able to connect the group with local venture capitalists.

Madigan, on the other hand, was sharpening his entrepreneurial skills at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Among other things, the Entrepreneurship Lab class introduced him to the nuts and bolts of startups, including customer acquisition and talking to investors. And Innovation Teams helped him study markets and design products for customer needs. “There was no handbook, but I benefitted a lot from those two classes,” he says.

So in 2012, Kateeva pivoted, switching gears to its YIELDjet system. Today, the system is a platform, Bulovic says, that, in the future, can be tweaked to print solid stage lighting panels, solar cells, nanostructure circuits, and luminescent concentrators, among other things. “All those would be enabled by the semiconductor printer Kateeva has been able to develop,” he says. “OLED displays are just the first application.”

Samsung and LG continue to innovate OLEDs, with the former introducing a new stretchable OLED screen and the latter aiming to solve the crease on foldable smartphones.

In Samsung"s demo, different display sections rose and fell to mimic a lava bubble forming and then dissipating on its own. However, the stretchable screen does make the video lava seem more realistic as it flows.

The earliest concepts were shown back in 2017, albeit with a smaller 9.1-inch display. According to Changhee Lee, the executive vice president of Samsung Display, these displays could only be stretched out by a small amount but have "improved significantly" recently.

The company is well-known for foldable smartphones like the Galaxy Z Fold 3. However, these devices have often been called out for developing a visible crease down the line where it bends. It"s unknown how and where Samsung will implement this stretchable display technology, be it in solving the crease on smartphones or on TVs to simulate 3D.

Developed by LG Chem, the Real Folding Window is a new cover material that is flexible yet retains a glass-like toughness. LG claims that this material will reduce the folding crease on displays.

LG plans on mass-producing the Real Folding Window in 2022, but won’t start selling them until 2023. The company plans on taking this new screen to laptops and tablets.

The global flexible display market size is expected to reach 220.75 billion in 2030 and grow at a CAGR of 34.83% during the forecast period (2021–2030). A flexible display is a visual output surface that is designed to be able to withstand being folded, bent, and twisted. Typically screens that use flexible displays are made of OLED displays. Flexible displays are becoming more prevalent in foldable technology such as smartphones, designed to be folded or closed like a book. Flexible displays are useful as they allow the device to be stored in a smaller space, such as a pocket while providing a larger screen size for media display.

Some of the major factors driving the adoption of connected and innovative solutions across the consumer electronics sector are the growing trend of smart homes and buildings, as well as the increasing demand for connected technologies. The incorporation of smart sensors into residential devices has increased the replacement cycle of new consumer electronics. The use of displays to control and communicate with the device is growing significantly.

For example, in July 2020, Samsung released the connected refrigerator SpaceMax Family Hub. It automates meal planning, allows consumers to see inside the refrigerator from anywhere, and users can watch their favorite TV shows while working in the kitchen on the refrigerator"s massive entertainment screen.

Aside from that, residential devices such as televisions are undergoing revolutionary changes. For example, the global demand for new TVs is expected to be solely for smart TVs; with increased access to high-speed internet, demand for smart TVs with better picture quality is increasing. With so many viewers consuming media from OTT platforms like Netflix, Amazon, and others, the need to store data effectively is becoming critical. According to Bitmovin, the market is shifting toward a new generation of video codecs that offer 30 to 70% better compression than H.264.

With the proliferation of screen sizes, the number of pixels per inch in 8K decreases. Additionally, studies show that consumers are unable to distinguish 8K videos from 4K videos. However, due to cost reductions in the coming years, demand for 8K screens is expected to rise significantly in the coming years.

PC gaming has recently become a popular choice among millennial gamers. This shift is primarily due to a combination of factors, including improved gameplay quality, the availability of high-end hardware and software, and increased internet bandwidth. Today, more exciting and demanding technology, such as VR and 4K displays, is available. As a result, PC gamers are expected to upgrade their equipment accordingly, which is one of the factors driving sales of gaming-specific PCs and their accessories like gaming screens. Thus, increased demand for picture quality has boosted the demand for flexible displays.

With the increasing demand for higher picture quality and resolution, vendors are increasingly investing in product innovation. LG Display, for example, invested KRW 1,740 billion in 2020; large vendors with a larger market share can invest a larger share of revenues in innovation, which other vendors in this space do not have.

Aside from that, the flexible display market share is highly dynamic in terms of technology pricing. For example, in recent times, the market selling prices of TFT-LCD and OLED panels have been consistently falling, affecting the revenues of vendors operating in the market and posing a challenge to their growth in the product category.

The industry is highly competitive, and vendors operating in it face price and margin pressure as many vendors add production capacity to compete on price. Vendors from Korea, China, Taiwan, and Japan are investing in expanding their production capacities, which significantly impacts global vendors" ability to remain sustainable and profitable in the market.

Furthermore, the new 8K displays are expected to decrease prices and sell for around USD 3,500 to 4,000 by 2022, down from their current average selling price of around USD 4,500. This is expected to have a negative impact on the margins of vendors operating in this space.

The ongoing evolution of smartphones and computers has aided in developing display technologies, with foldable and flexible displays emerging as the most recent landscape component. Curved displays have already gained traction among users through innovative TV screens, desktop monitors, and phones, so the market is expected to grow over the forecast period.

Flexible displays, which are being seriously discussed as a potentially disruptive technology for future handheld and other devices, are being investigated by smartphone behemoths such as LG, Samsung, and Huawei to deliver revolutionary designs to users.

However, cost increases, decreased finished product rates, price increases, a lack of product differentiation, seasonal demand patterns, and uncertainty about economic prospects pose significant demand growth challenges. In 2020, there will be more opportunities for flexible OLED displays due to a focus on cost reduction, adding new functions, implementing product differentiation, a fresh appearance, and industry demand for 5G models.

Understandably, the introduction of 5G will bring the ability to perform more tasks on a single device than was previously possible on previous networks, owing to the enhanced capabilities of new phones and laptops. Currently, the industry believes that flexible OLED displays are the best solution for the next generation smartphone market.

OLED is a new display technology that allows for more efficient displays and lighting panels. OLEDs are already being used in a variety of mobile devices and televisions. OLEDs are the most recent generation of display technology, offering superior performance and improved optical characteristics over older LED and LCD technologies.

Furthermore, smartphone manufacturers such as Samsung Z fold and LG G8X have used second-generation flexible OLED displays that can be bent. OLEDs were mainly used to create a market impression of foldable smartphones. Rolled OLEDs, on the other hand, are now making their way into the TV and smartphone markets.

Compared to other options, flexible displays made of OLED are more energy efficient. OLEDs are available in a very small factor, allowing manufacturers to build them as individual pixels. These are already being used in a variety of consumer electronics, such as curved OLED TVs, and are in high demand.

Due to the global shutdown, production of flexible displays fell precipitously in 2020 due to the global supply chain disruption. COVID-19 had an impact on the operations of not only flexible display manufacturers but also their suppliers and distributors.

In the short term, the failure of export shipments and poor domestic semiconductor demand compared to pre-COVID-19 levels are expected to impact negatively and slightly stagnant demand for semiconductor devices, affecting the flexible display market growth.

As a result of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, several major economies have been placed on lockdown. Sales of electronic products have been hampered, and supply networks have been disrupted. Furthermore, many economies are losing a significant amount of revenue due to manufacturing plant closures. As a result, the general scenario has hampered the demand for flexible displays in 2020.

The market is expected to recover from mid of 2022 as people have made huge savings during the lockdown. The growing demand for high-quality pictures and the smart house is expected to drive the growth of the flexible display market.

However, the market faced challenges such as reduced workforce and delays in receiving components and materials. It caused an unexpected spike in panel pricing, with a month-to-month jump of more than 7%.

By display type, the OLED segment dominates the global market and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 35.87%, generating a revenue of USD 175.95 billion by 2030. This OLED display can be subjected to a high degree of flexibility, consumes less energy, and is prominent in the market. In addition, OLED offers the potential for vast improvements in image quality and opens up new possibilities for device design.

Based on the substrate material, plastic acquires the largest share of the market. Plastic-based flexible displays are the most recent advancements. Plastic AMOLED panels are substantially thinner and lighter than traditional glass-based displays, allowing for slimmer devices or larger batteries.

Based on application, smartphones and tablets hold a prominent share in the global flexible display market. The smartphone and tablet segment is expected to grow at a CAGR of 30.96%, generating a revenue of USD 116.14 billion by 2030. The smartphone industry has been steadily developing and growing, both in terms of market size and models.

By geography, Asia-Pacific accounted for thelargest market share of around 43.78% in 2021. The APAC flexible display market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 36.01% generating revenue of USD 100.82 billion by 2030.

The Asia-Pacific market landscape is primarily driven by significant market consolidation, resulting in a plethora of advanced display technologies that have dominated the market. Furthermore, Asian countries are the home of display manufacturing foundries, giving this region a dominant market position.

The majority of display manufacturers are concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region, with South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and China accounting for a sizable proportion of vendors operating and catering to various electronics manufacturers worldwide. Chinese panel manufacturers have continued to invest in new fabrication facilities and additional supplies due to Chinese government initiatives and support. Thus, Asia-Pacific is expected to be at the epicenter of the market due to the region"s growing penetration and consumer base for consumer electronics.

The initial market demand in the consumer electronics segment is expected to come primarily from emerging economies in APAC, North America, and Europe. The adoption of flexible OLED displays is anticipated to drive the market. The majority of the companies" manufacturing facilities and corporate offices are spread across Asia-Pacific, Europe, and North America. LG Display, Samsung Electronics, Motorola Inc., and Koninklijke Philips NV are just a few of the companies with manufacturing facilities all over the world.

The end-user application settings and subsequent demand for various television set heavily influence the European market landscape. In the current market, European TV OEMs and brands use either an IPS panel or a VA panel, depending on their models and sales regions. For example, the VA panel may have a higher contrast ratio in a comparatively darker environment, whereas consumers in some European countries prefer a darker living room.

On December 29th, 2021, LG Display, launched its newest OLED TV technology ‘OLED EX’. This next-generation OLED EX display implements LG Display’s deuterium and personalized algorithm-based ‘EX-Technology’.

On April 19th, 2022, Samsung launched its stunning Neo QLED 8K and Neo QLED TV range, offering the most pristine picture quality and immersive soundscapes to transform living spaces.

LG Display Co. Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, Royole Corporation, e-ink Holdings, BOE Technology Group Co. Ltd, Flexenable are the top players in the market.

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SINGAPORE/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The touted arrival this year of wearable gadgets such as computer displays strapped to wrists and in wrap-around glasses is just a step towards a bigger revolution in screens - those that can be bent, folded and rolled up.A Cima NanoTech employee uses a portable microscope to show their proprietary SANTE Technology silver nanoparticle network on a sample piece of SANTE Film laminated on glass in their lab in Singapore in this April 12, 2013 photo. The network on the SANTE Film enables electrical conductivity at high transparency and flexibility. REUTERS/Edgar Su

Once freed from today’s relatively heavy, breakable and fixed glass displays, tomorrow’s devices may look very different, with screens that can be rolled out, attached to uneven surfaces, or even stretched.

“It becomes a product designer’s paradise - once the technology is sorted out,” says Jonathan Melnick, who analyses display technology for Lux Research.

There is no shortage of prototypes - South Korea"s Samsung Electronicsthis year showed off a display screen that extends from the side of a device - but obstacles remain: overcoming technical issues, figuring out how to mass produce parts cheaply, and coming up with devices compelling enough for gadget buyers.

Screen technology - and the global small display market is seen more than doubling to around $72 billion by 2016, according to DisplaySearch - is still dominated by liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which require a backlight and sit between two sheets of glass, making the screen a major contributor to the weight of a device, from laptops to tablets.

"Most of the weight in a tablet is the glass structure in the display and the support structure around it to prevent it from cracking," said Kevin Morishige, a former engineer at Cisco Systems Inc, Hewlett-Packard Coand Palm.

LCD’s dominance is already under threat from lighter Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) that don’t need backlighting, are brighter, offer a wider viewing angle and better colour contrast - and can be printed onto a few layers.

Corning Inc, whose toughened Gorilla glass became the screen of choice for many smartphones, will provide phones with curved glass edges as soon as this year. It is also now promoting Willow Glass, which can be as thin as a sheet of paper and is flexible enough to be wrapped around a device or structure. Initially, Willow will be used as a coating for products like solar panels, but it is eventually expected to create curved products.

A key selling point for Willow is more efficient production which involves so-called roll-to-roll manufacturing, like a printing press, rather than today’s more costly batch manufacturing. But the commercialization of Willow as a flexible product is some way off, James Clappin, who heads Corning’s glass technology group, told Reuters.

“You can bend it, but you can’t keep flexing it,” said Adrian Burden, a UK consultant who has worked on several start-ups related to display technology, and holds patents in the field. This means that while glass is likely to continue to play a leading role in devices with curved displays, screens that users can bend, fold and roll will likely be plastic.

“There are barrier films in all sorts of products, for example food packaging, but the challenge is that OLED is one of the most sensitive materials we follow, and so creates huge challenges,” says Lux Research’s Melnick.

Singapore-based Tera-Barrier Films, for example, has developed a way to plug leaks in the layers using nano