For TCL, printed OLED is already a "can't lose" gamble related to the status of the next-generation display panel industry. With the steady progress of TCL, the pressure of the technical route battle on IT OLED may come to the side of evaporation technology.
At the China Home Appliances and Consumer Electronics Expo (AWE 2024) held recently, TCL Huaxing Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "TCL Huaxing") showcased the world's first 14" 2.8K printed Hybrid OLED notebook sample. TCL Huaxing Liu Xiaolan revealed that the world's first printed OLED display trial production line "on the whole is the same as we expected at that time, and the progress is relatively smooth". It is expected to be officially put into production by the end of 2024.
Previously, Ouyang Hongping, senior vice president of TCL Huaxing, revealed that the annual output of the printed OLED display production line in Wuhan can reach 10 million pieces (it did not disclose the size of each product.) It is known that each 5.5 generation glass substrate can cut 16 pieces of 17-inch or 10 pieces of 22-inch 16:9 panels, which is equivalent to about 5,000 pieces of glass substrate per month based on 10 million pieces of 5.5-inch glass substrates.
Industry insiders pointed out that in the era of evaporation OLED, TCL Huaxing's production capacity deployment lags behind Samsung, BOE, LG, and even Visionox. In this context, changing lanes and overtaking through printed display is an opportunity that TCL Huaxing, as the world's second largest display panel company, must seize in the outbreak period of OLED panels for IT.
Targeting IT, Samsung and BOE are increasing their investment
Since 2020, the application of OLED panels in IT products has achieved initial success. In particular, with the support of Apple's next-generation IT products fully switching to OLED screens, investing in IT-specific OLED panel lines: that is, expanding the size of glass substrates and upgrading from the 6th generation line to the 8th generation line has become the general trend of the OLED industry.
Among them, Samsung Display announced on March 10 that it recently held a "ceremony to move in the A6 production line equipment" at the Asan Campus in Chungcheongnam-do. This is the 8.6th generation organic light-emitting diode (OLED) production line for information technology (IT). The arrival of the first evaporation equipment also means the landing of the most critical basic equipment for OLED manufacturing. This production line is Samsung's 6th OLED production line, and will also become the world's highest-generation OLED production line and the world's first 8th generation+ production line based on RGB OLED display solutions.
It is reported that Samsung's A6 line is currently planned to be two production lines with a production capacity of 7.5K glass substrates per month (a total of 15K per month), and adopts a double-stacked tandem OLED process method, which is mainly deployed for the application needs of Apple's new generation of IT products.
BOE will hold a groundbreaking ceremony for B16, the 8th generation organic light-emitting diode (OLED) production line for IT products, on the 27th of this month. The total investment of this production line is as high as 63 billion yuan, which may be the largest project in the world at present, and its production capacity is as high as 32,000 glass substrates per month. However, such a huge investment will be carried out in phases, divided into two phases and four phases. Among them, the production capacity of 6,344 glass substrates per month in the first phase and the first phase will be put into production before October 2026, and the production capacity of 8,557 glass substrates per month in the first and second phases will be completed in June 2027 - that is, the production capacity scale of the first phase is similar to that of Samsung A6.
The completion time of the second phase of the BOE B16 project is planned to be September 2029. However, the construction of the basic plant will be completed when the first phase of the first phase is completed in 2026. According to industry insiders on the 19th, BOE recently ordered 4 evaporation machines from South Korea's Sunic System (Samsung's evaporation machine uses Japanese Canon equipment: according to media reports, the price of Canon Tokki's 8th generation evaporation machine supplied to Samsung Display is 800 billion won each, and Sunic System proposed a price of about 300 billion won to BOE).
Through the investment plan, it can be seen that the construction of 8th generation IT OLED panel of Samsung and BOE has several characteristics: 1. The planning is very anxious, because everyone wants to grab the first soup of the IT panel; 2. The production capacity is promoted in stages, and the cycle is relatively long, because the scale of IT demand is "psychologically bottomless"—— Leverage the scale needs to reduce the cost, which takes time and technical verification;3.The production capacity of the first phase and the first stage is not large, mainly to meet the actual market demand, and to further verify the technical process, after all, the 8.6 generation glass substrate process of RGB three-primary color OLED is the first time in the industry;4.The length of time in the next three or four years, the manufacturing process fully leaves room for upgrading or changing at any time......
These characteristics determine the OLED line for IT, that is, the certainty of demand, but there are also many details and process uncertainties on the supply side. With TCL Huaxing printing OLED joining the IT market, this uncertain process variable is still increasing.
Under the large-size glass substrate, the OLED process dispute
In the face of the preparation of the next generation of OLED display panels, there are currently two main process controversies. The first is, whether it is evaporated OLED or printed OLED.
The characteristics of evaporation OLED have been fully verified on the 6th generation line, and Samsung and LG have also verified the panel for color TV on the 8th generation line. It can be said that the maturity is relatively high. However, it is a waste of materials and has a high theoretical cost. The advantages of printed OLED are lower theoretical cost, material saving, high manufacturing efficiency, especially the low process difficulty of adapting to large-size glass substrates, but its disadvantage is that the printed display has been circling in the laboratory, and there is no successful application case.
At present, TCL Huaxing Wuhan's printing technology test line is the first OLED printing mass production technology verification line in China. Previously, the printing line of JOLED in Japan was not only small-scale, but also had been dismantled, and part of the equipment was transferred to TCL Huaxing. In the core equipment of printed OLED, the current 4.5/5.5 generation line equipment can be mass-produced, and the 6th generation line equipment is still in the research and development stage. That is, printing and display, marching to the 8th generation line, etc., still need to wait for "core equipment". Wuhan Guochuangke predicts that the 6th generation printing equipment will come out in 2024 and the 8th generation equipment will come out in 2026.
In addition, the viewing angle of current printed OLED products is still limited and cannot meet the needs of color TV applications. But in professional fields such as laptops, IT, mobile phones, and medical displays, this is not a problem.
The second controversial process point of the next-generation OLED panel is: whether to use the traditional metal mask FMM patterning technology or lithography patterning technology under the evaporation OLED. At the beginning of May 2023, Visionox released its Visionox intelligent pixelization (ViP) technology and exhibited a medium-sized ViP AMOLED sample. This technology uses a lithography machine to realize the patterning of the evaporation layer.
The advantage of lithography patterning is to solve the "distortion" problem of FMM metal masks in large-format panel applications. The latter can lead to a decrease in yield and even the scrapping of panels. In addition, compared with FMM and lithography, the line width is larger, and the material layer will be stressed and deformed during the separation process, and the panel opening rate, brightness performance, and life performance are also easily affected. For lithography patterning, the equipment basically adopts the front-end TFT process lithography machine, which does not need to introduce new equipment, and there is no material consumables cost and performance bottleneck of FMM. Visionox was once rumored to be interested in building an 8th generation OLED line project based on this new process.
At present, Japan's JDI is also preparing to build an OLED panel project based on lithography patterning technology in Anhui. Previously, it was also rumored that Samsung and Huike were interested in JDI's lithography OLED graphics solution.
That is, on the whole, the construction of OLED lines for IT is faced with the problem of the path of technical process selection. In this regard, BOE and Samsung have confirmed that they will adopt evaporation technology at least in the initial stage, while TCL Huaxing is sure that the printing shows that the new track is expected to change lanes and overtake. In evaporation OLED, it is also worth paying attention to whether the emerging lithography patterning technology will be implemented and whether it can bring new players to IT OLED panels.
Divergence and progress intensify the "prudence" of industry investment
"The investment of the OLED 8th generation line with the same capacity is 5 times or more than that of the LCD project. This is currently the biggest problem of the OLED line for IT. Industry insiders pointed out that "expensive" may be the key to all the uncertainty in the industry now. For example, BOE B16 has an investment of up to 63 billion yuan. The combination of large investment and uncertainty in the technical path makes the investment process more cautious. This is also the main reason why the phased process of Samsung and BOE's 8th generation OLED projects is extraordinarily long.
At the same time, even if the printed display OLED has a theoretical cost advantage, the early products will encounter a "cost bottleneck". Moreover, the more advanced TCL Huaxing's printing process, the higher the pressure and credible risk of technology path selection for investors in evaporation OLED.
That is, the two major technology camps of evaporation and printing are facing new opportunities in the demand for IT OLED. Among them, technology maturity and cost competitiveness are the key factors. The initial production capacity can be rushed, which is also conducive to seizing early customers and obtaining a return on investment as soon as possible. Nowadays, different enterprises and technology lines are a bit of a "race against time" in IT OLED.
Therefore, it is very likely that 2025-2026 will see "product PK" for printing and evaporation on OLED IT applications. When the time comes, it is possible that the battle of processes will have a final result. In addition, it is worth mentioning that TCL has also built a mass production line for evaporation OLED, and Samsung and BOE have also carried out a large number of printed OLED technology research and development and sample trial production: that is, no manufacturer only bets on one technology.