HDTV Almanac - OLED Screens from Carl Zeiss

[alfredpoor]

You may recognize “Carl Zeiss” as the company that makes excellent optics for cameras and binoculars and telescopes, but the company also makes a head-mounted display system named “cinemizer“. At the recent IFA show, the company revealed an upgraded model that uses OLED panels in the goggles to deliver the images.
Now, the downside is that [...]

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[lmarks]

Alfred, you noted that the Galaxy Tab uses an LCD insted of OLED display, and concluded that was because OLEDs are not in large-scale production.

While it is true that OLEDs are not in large-scale production (only Samsung is in commercial production, and they are using 100% of the production for their Galaxy phones), a more likely reason for the lack of medium-size (7-inch) panels in the Galaxy Tab is that it is not economic to produce such panels on a Gen 4 or Gen 5 line. Thus far no manufacturer is producing OLEDs on a line newer (larger mother glass size) than that. The production technology isn't there yet.

When it becomes possible to produce OLEDs on a Gen 6 or Gen 8 line we will see plenty of medium-size OLED displays, and when they can be run on Gen 10 or 11, we will see big OLED TVs too.

Larry Marks

[alfredpoor]

Alfred, you noted that the Galaxy Tab uses an LCD insted of OLED display, and concluded that was because OLEDs are not in large-scale production.

While it is true that OLEDs are not in large-scale production (only Samsung is in commercial production, and they are using 100% of the production for their Galaxy phones), a more likely reason for the lack of medium-size (7-inch) panels in the Galaxy Tab is that it is not economic to produce such panels on a Gen 4 or Gen 5 line. Thus far no manufacturer is producing OLEDs on a line newer (larger mother glass size) than that. The production technology isn't there yet.

When it becomes possible to produce OLEDs on a Gen 6 or Gen 8 line we will see plenty of medium-size OLED displays, and when they can be run on Gen 10 or 11, we will see big OLED TVs too.

Larry Marks

You're exactly right, Larry. (What I said was that OLEDs aren't in large scale production for screens larger than a cell phone.) And we do need larger fabs in order to make larger screens -- even 7-inch panels -- practical. One of the huge barriers at present is that OLEDs require a polysilicon backplane in order to get the higher electron mobility required (as compared with an LCD). The laser annealing process that turns amorphous silicon layers to polysilicon don't work on substrates much larger than Gen 4, so even if Samsung builds their larger OLED plant, it will still be limited by this slow and small backplane processing, and so there may be limited gains in terms of productivity (and lower production costs).

So I totally agree that we need to see Gen 6 or Gen 8 OLED lines before we can expect to see even tablet OLED screens at a reasonable cost, and I think we're at least five years away from that.

Alfred