The Chinese manufacturer TCL would start mass production of large OLED panels in 2024, which are manufactured on the basis of an inkjet production process. Chinese media write this on the basis of statements made by a TCL manager.
According to a TCL manager, the aforementioned production line is currently being prepared and progress is going quite smoothly, reports Chinese Time-Weekly. This is a project under the care of China Star Optoelectronics Technology, or CSOT, a display manufacturer owned by TCL and Samsung Display, among others. The construction period of the production line is planned for 2021 to 2023 and the total investment for this is estimated to be 5.8 billion euros.
A month ago, TCL announced that it may show a qd-oled TV based on an inkjet production process in September next year during the IFA fair. The Japanese manufacturer JOLED is one of the panel suppliers that TCL works with. JOLED has been researching the printing of OLED panels since 2015 and currently supplies smaller OLED panels to smartphone manufacturers and for PC monitors.
It is not entirely clear whether the project, which should begin mass production in 2024, is based on a collaboration with JOLED, or a collaboration with Guangdong Juhua, China, or whether it is TCL’s own, independent project. Guangdong Juhua was established in 2016 with the aim of industrializing OLED panel printing technologies. CSOT had a 66 percent stake in Guangdong Juhua when it was founded. At the beginning of this year, the latter showed together with TCL the first prototype of a rollable 31 “OLED TV based on inkjet printing.
The inkjet production process for OLED panels would be much more precise than the method where different layers are put on top of each other by means of evaporation. LG Display, among others, uses evaporation for its OLED panels for televisions and Samsung Display probably also uses this process in its pursuit of OLED panels based on blue OLEDs. Samsung Display would already use the inkjet printing technology to manufacture the quantum dot color conversion filters, so that the company may also be able to use this technology for the blue layer.