At the end of August, a physics class held in a panel workshop attracted the attention of tens of millions of netizens. One side is the brain-burning theoretical knowledge of physics, and the other side is the manufacturing practice of advanced panel technology. The fusion and collision of the two scenes have made many netizens not only unaware of the power, but also intuitively felt the beauty of knowledge and technology. The location of the class was chosen in the printed OLED exhibition hall and production line of TCL Huaxing Wuhan Base. This is a place with historical significance.
In the past, the technical route and industrialization of the panel industry have been dominated by Japanese and Korean companies. But the printed OLEDs that are about to be mass-produced here are rewriting this rule.
Article | You Yong
Editor | Zhou Luping
In March 2024, on his first day as the president of the Korea Display Industry Association, Samsung Display CEO Choi Ju-sun shouted out a long-standing slogan in the hearts of Koreans in front of many media:In 2027, it will definitely regain the number one position in the global display industry from China.
Since China took the top spot on the LCD list for the first time in 2017, Korean manufacturers such as Samsung and LG, which are showing signs of waning, have taken the initiative to withdraw from the highly competitive and unprofitable LCD track in 2020, focusing on the next generation panel technology OLED, and at the same time selling the few remaining LCD production lines to Chinese companies. Today, China already controls 70% of the LCD market’s production capacity.
But what really makes Korean companies nervous is that according to data from CINNO Research, in the field of OLED panels for smartphones,Chinese panel manufacturers surpassed South Korea in shipments for the first time in the first quarter of 2024. Competition between Chinese and Korean panel companies is extending from LCD to OLED.
A reality that we have to face squarely is that in the high-end OLED product line, the gap between China and South Korea is still very obvious. Korean companies account for 90% of the high-end OLED market, and there is a 1-1.5 year generation gap between them and Chinese companies in terms of technology.
In the eyes of many people, this will be another version of the strong who will always be strong: industry leaders have gained huge profits, and then invested more money in the research and development of cutting-edge technologies, thereby maintaining the lead in the next generation of technology, and even blocking the progress of latecomers by forming alliances and technological blockades.
But the seal is starting to loosen. At the end of 2024, TCL Huaxing announced the official mass production of printed OLED, and the first product will be used in 21.6-inch 4K medical equipment displays. Zhao Jun, CEO of TCL CSOT, gave a very high evaluation at the time:"This represents the first time in the field of display technology that a Chinese company has led global technology into the commercialization stage."
In the past, Chinese companies have always been followers in the panel market. Although shipments are large, the technical route and industrialization have always been dominated by Japanese and Korean companies. Even in the OLED field, most domestic companies choose the evaporation OLED route, which is also an advantageous area dominated by Japanese and Korean companies. But the breakthrough of printed OLED is rewriting this rule.
01
The panel chase battle of East Asia's King of Scrolls
The liquid crystal display was first invented by Americans, but was carried forward by Japanese companies. In the 1970s and 1980s, Japanese companies such as Seiko and Sharp obtained licenses for liquid crystal technology from American companies.
While American companies were still struggling with picture tubes, Sharp quickly launched the first thin and light LCD TV, realizing the industrialization of LCDs. However, CRT TVs, which had a hump on their backs, quickly fell into disadvantage. In 1994, Japanese LCD panels accounted for 94% of the global market share.
Smart Koreans sensed opportunities and invested crazily in LCD panels.This is a huge gamble on the destiny of the country. Samsung and LG have suffered losses for seven or eight consecutive years in order to industrialize LCD.
Korean companies have long realized that the panel industry has a significant cyclical effect. The more losses they make, the more investment they make, and the more investment they make, the more likely they are to catch up when a new wave of opportunities arrives. Samsung’s countercyclical investment strategy also shines at this stage.
Around 1997, Korean companies that had suffered losses for many years finally had a chance to turn around. At that time, Japanese companies were in a state of collapse under the impact of the Asian financial crisis and the "suppression" of the United States. South Korea has seized the throne of the panel industry leader from Japan.
But just a few years after the good days of Korean companies, a new king of volume was born. LCD market share has been gradually eroded by manufacturers from Taiwan and Mainland China. In 2017, mainland China replaced South Korea as the world's largest screen producer.
The competition between East Asia's three major volume kings is vividly displayed in the panel industry. From the era of picture tubes, to later LCD, and now to OLED, the panel industry has always been dominated by China, Japan and South Korea. When new technologies emerge, the market structure will undergo drastic changes.
Throughout the history of industrial development, the success of China's panel industry is due not only to massive industrial investment, which ensures continued investment in high-generation production lines, but also to the development of the downstream electronics industry and consumer market, which provides strong demand for upstream panels.
But a cruel reality is that in the past few generations of panel technology and the wave of industrialization, although China’s panel industry has made great progress,At the most upstream of the industrial chain, it is still Japanese and Korean manufacturers that have the power to define technology and standards that reap high profits.
When display technology evolved to OLED, this embarrassing situation did not change significantly. In 2019, Korean companies that realized that they could not compete with China's industrial chain in the mature LCD market gradually withdrew from the LCD competition and focused on the breakthrough of the next generation OLED.
As early as 2007, Sony produced the world's first OLED TV, but it was only 11 inches. In the same year, Samsung achieved mass production of OLED, mainly used for mobile phone screens. In 2012, LG mass-produced the world's first 55-inch OLED panel, which became a blockbuster. The market once showed a situation in which LG led large-size OLEDs and Samsung monopolized small-size OLEDs.
It is generally believed that in the next ten years, LCD screens will remain the mainstream core technology route in the large-size field. However, OLED has become the next battleground for panel manufacturers. Compared with LCD which relies on backlight,OLED is self-luminous, and each pixel controls the brightness independently. It has a series of advantages such as high resolution, low power consumption, and flexible display.
However, OLED is limited by the manufacturing process and has been maturely used in small sizes in the past. For example, the iPhoneX released by Apple in 2017 used Samsung's AMOLED screen. However, as technology has matured in recent years, OLED has also been increasingly used in medium sizes.
Especially in 2024, OLED's share of the smartphone panel market will exceed LCD's for the first time, reaching 53%. OLED's industrialization is rapidly maturing driven by strong demand. "The expansion of OLED applications in medium-sized applications and the increase in penetration rate may be the only major trend determined by the entire display industry in the next five years." TCL Huaxing CEO Zhao Jun said.
In 2024, CCTV reported a news that the output value of my country's OLED display panels and modules exceeded 100 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 38%, and the international market accounted for 52%.
The three major players in China, Japan and South Korea have begun to secretly compete in the OLED field. Many domestic high-generation OLED production lines are under construction in full swing and are expected to be put into production in one or two years. Samsung has already built a number of high-generation OLED production lines. After LG built a high-generation OLED production line in Guangzhou, it also began to invest in the construction of OLED production lines in South Korea.South Korea is trying every means to avoid the fate of the OLED industry being caught up by China again.
02
The battle for OLED’s route
On the road to the future of OLED, many technical routes have evolved.
Evaporated OLED is currently the most mature mass production process.Currently, OLED screens on mobile phones basically use the evaporation process, and almost all existing mass production lines follow the evaporation route. Its principle is to heat the material to be plated under high vacuum conditions until it vaporizes, and then accurately solidifies it to a designated position on the glass substrate through a mask to form pixels. Key equipment and materials such as evaporation machines and FMM masks are required behind the scenes.
butEvaporation has certain limitations, because the FMM mask requires a certain strength, and a large gap needs to be retained between each pixel molding hole, resulting in most of the material remaining on the mask.The overall utilization rate is less than 30%.At the same time, the evaporation process has high requirements on the vacuum chamber, and the investment cost of production line equipment is very high.
In addition, as the size of the panel increases, the FMM mask will shift to a certain extent between the center and the edge under the action of gravity, resulting in inconsistent thickness and shape of the OLED evaporation deposition on the entire glass substrate. Therefore, most of the evaporated OLED production lines are still aimed at small-sized terminal devices such as mobile phones.
Japan's JDI and China's Visionox are taking the FMM-free lithography technology route, which has the advantage of bypassing the limitations of FMM. However, FMM-free lithography technology still lacks mass production experience and has not been tested by the market. And in the eyes of many people, FMM-free lithography technology is essentially an evaporation process.
Printed OLED is completely independent from the evaporation route.It drips luminescent material onto the substrate like an inkjet printer, does not require a mask, and the positioning accuracy can be controlled at the micron level. Compared with the evaporation process,The biggest advantage of inkjet printing is its high material utilization rate.The evaporation process only has a utilization rate of 30%, while the printed OLED process can achieve a utilization rate of more than 90%.
Secondly, the evaporation process requires vacuum heating, while the printing process only requires a vacuum environment when the solvent is evaporated. The investment requirements for equipment are not that high and do not require too much vacuum equipment.
In addition, the flexibility of the inkjet printing process makes it easier to adapt to the cutting needs of large substrates. It is generally believed that printed OLEDs can be manufactured in normal pressure or low vacuum environments. Compared with vacuum evaporation technology, upgrading panel size theoretically only requires adding nozzles and other equipment on the printing equipment, making it easier to adjust to different sizes and shapes.
These advantages of printed OLED also mean that the manufacturing cost after mass production is lower, and compared with evaporated OLED, it will have a higher quality-price ratio, thereby accelerating the popularity of OLED screens in medium-sized IT consumption scenarios.
However, printing OLED requires very high process precision. It is necessary to divide 1 ml of liquid luminescent material into 1 billion drops, and then work at a frequency of 40,000 drops per second. Each drop must be accurate, and at the same time, it must be ensured that the dropped liquid is spread and dried completely evenly. This is a very challenging operation, as the printing process is prone to the coffee ring effect.
Zhao Jun made a vivid metaphor:It's like distributing a bottle of wine to the people of the whole country, and all the distribution must be completed within half a minute, while ensuring absolute fairness. This impossible task has become a reality in the panel industry.
But these technical routes are not actually a life-or-death, either-or relationship.
Looking at the investment layout of each company, you will find that in the early years, they were all betting on long positions, including both evaporated OLED and printed OLED. However, the 8.6-generation OLED panel production lines currently invested and constructed by all parties use the evaporation process.
This is not because printed OLED is not good, but whether it is the maturity of the upstream supply chain or the difficulty of technology implementation, evaporated OLED is currently a relatively easy technical route to quickly implement mass production.
In fact, TCL Huaxing also has an OLED production line with evaporation technology, and its t4 factory is producing small-size OLED mobile phone screens. However, when it comes to betting on future technology, TCL Huaxing chose to bet heavily on printed OLED.With one hand focusing on the needs of current customers and the other hand focusing on the future, we hope to change our destiny through the exploration of cutting-edge technology.
03
How to get rid of the fate of stuck neck
In 2023, Samsung decided to invest 4.1 trillion won to build the 8.6th generation OLED production line. However, due to the price issue of the key equipment evaporation machine, there has been a long-term dispute with Japan's Canon Tokki. Samsung found it too expensive, but Apple, the parent of Party A, was very fond of Canon Tokki's evaporation equipment.
As the largest customer of Samsung's OLED screens, Apple has always had a strong say in the supply chain. Relying on Apple's preference, Canon Tokki is unwilling to make too many concessions on price. In the end, Samsung spent 800 billion won (approximately 2.2 billion yuan) to purchase two Canon Tokki evaporation machines.
The evaporation machine is the core equipment in the field of panel manufacturing.Its function is to plate the three primary colors of red, green and blue organic matter and metal electrodes onto the display substrate in a vacuum environment using a special process. andOnly a few companies such as South Korea and Japan can provide evaporation machines for high-generation production lines.
The key is that even if you have money, you may not be able to buy it. Tokki's production capacity is very limited, only one or twenty units per year. The supply is far less than the demand, and the delivery cycle is often one or two years. Moreover, because Samsung saved Tokki's life back then, the two parties signed an agreement that the evaporation machines produced by Tokki would be exclusively supplied to Samsung. This also gives Samsung a head start in OLED. It was not until Tokki's production capacity increased in 2017 that Chinese companies obtained procurement quotas.
In 2018, "Science and Technology Daily" sorted out 35 "stuck neck" technologies that restrict China's industrial development, including vacuum evaporation.
In addition to the evaporation machine, the fine metal mask FMM is a key consumable for the evaporation process.More than 90% of the global FMM mask market share is monopolized by the Japanese company DNP, and OLED manufacturers including South Korea and China have to sign exclusive agreements with it. Most of the Invar36 alloy, the key material for manufacturing high-end FMM, comes from Hitachi Metals of Japan. The two Japanese companies have entered into an exclusive strategic cooperation. Hitachi Metal needs to exclusively supply DNP for Invar materials below 50 microns.
No wonder people in the domestic panel industry are lamenting: "The FMM industry has a material blockade dilemma."
It is not difficult to find that from equipment to materials, the key technical nodes of evaporated OLED have been heavily guarded by Japanese and Korean companies. This not only leaves domestic companies without a say in negotiations. More importantly, under the technological wave of OLED, Chinese companies will still be followers and be choked by others at any time.
The result is that many domestic OLED manufacturers are not making money due to yield and cost factors. Only Samsung and upstream equipment and material manufacturers are quietly making money.
This scene seems familiar in the chip field. EUV lithography machines for manufacturing high-process chips almost all rely on ASML of the Netherlands, while photoresist, the core material for producing chips, relies on Japanese companies.
The lack of cores and screens is a memory that many domestic electronic information practitioners cannot erase. At present, although China's chip and screen shipments are far ahead, the situation remains the same when it comes to the core equipment and materials for manufacturing chips and screens.
Rather than being held by others' necks and led by the nose,TCL Huaxing decided to take a different approach and take the printed OLED route, bypassing evaporation equipment and FMM materials, which has the advantages of low cost, environmental protection and high performance.
This is also the original intention of TCL Huaxing’s bet on printed OLED. In addition to the technology itself saving materials and making the production process simpler, it brings greater room for imagination. The more important consideration is that,Most of the patents for evaporated OLED are in the hands of Japanese and Korean companies. Only by changing lanes can there be an opportunity to overtake.
Today, in the field of printed OLEDs, TCL Huaxing already has the world's largest number of available invention patents. From the formula of luminescent materials to the structure of printing equipment, it has formed a moat.
But mass production is a key part of the transition from technology to industry. TCL Huaxing has also experienced a thrilling leap in printing OLED.
In 2023, Japan’s JOLED suddenly declared bankruptcy. As a spiritual leader and mentor in the industry, JOLED began trial production of printed OLED panels in 2017, and invested in the world's first inkjet printed OLED panel production line in 2019.Although JOLED closed due to poor management, it gives people a feeling that their faith is about to collapse.
This once embarrassed the printed OLED route and made TCL Huaxing very uncomfortable. TCL Huaxing once considered building its own printed OLED production line, but because the investment was too large, it finally chose a compromise plan. It spent 2 billion yuan to invest in JOLED and let JOLED's production line be used as a pilot line for TCL Huaxing. The cooperation period was three years. The two parties agreed on three opportunities and only helped TCL Huaxing to trial produce one product. As a result, the partner disappeared before the cooperation expired.
Whether it was internal employees or external investors, a wave of doubts suddenly poured in. In the end, it was Li Dongsheng, founder and chairman of TCL, who made the final decision. Printing OLED has already achieved results, and we have seen the dawn and cannot give up halfway. TCL Huaxing gritted its teeth and simply bought the JOLED equipment and moved it to Wuhan. After improvements and upgrades, it became TCL Huaxing's printed OLED production line.
After nearly two years, printed OLED has blossomed in Wuhan.
04
The balance of history is tilting
In June 2015, Li Dongsheng delivered a 36-minute speech at the SID conference in San Jose, USA, all in English. In addition to introducing the development of China's display industry, Li Dongsheng also issued an industry prediction:Printed display technology may become the core technology of a new generation of large-size displays, "making displays like printing newspapers."
Ten years later, still at the San Jose Convention and Exhibition Center in the United States, the dream became reality. As a frequent visitor to the exhibition, TCL CSOT exhibited the "full-size product family" born on the world's first printed OLED mass production line, covering all application scenarios from small-sized smart terminals to medium- and large-sized commercial displays and smart home displays.
This is also the first time in the world that a single manufacturer has achieved full scene coverage of printed OLED technology from small to large sizes. Printed OLED is ushering in the dawn of industrialization. According to TCL's plan, in the next one or two years, the current mass production lines will produce products directly for C-end users, including notebooks, tablets, monitors, TVs, etc.
The balance of history is tilting. On the strategic high ground dominated by Japanese and Korean manufacturers, TCL Huaxing has opened up a gap in the evolution of the industry by relying on the technical route of printed OLED.
"From early projection, CRT display, plasma, LCD to OLED, the invention and industrialization of almost every technology are dominated by foreign companies. The mass production of printed OLED technology breaks this situation and puts Chinese companies at the forefront of global display technology," Zhao Jun said.
The product value brought by printed OLED is not only on the industrial side, but also on the consumer side. Because no metal mask is needed, printed OLED is directly printed into the preset pixel pits through an inkjet print head, using Real RGB to achieve a regular arrangement of the three primary colors, achieving a truly high-quality display effect. The traditional evaporation process is prone to color shift and blurred text edges due to the large sub-pixel gaps.
During the "Everything Makes Reason" factory tour live broadcast, even Zhang Chaoyang, founder, chairman and CEO of Sohu, and Ph.D. in physics, couldn't help but sigh: This technology is great!
However, one of the current challenges is thatSince printed OLED started late, the related materials are not as mature as evaporation technology materials, making the supply chain not so complete.At present, only TCL Huaxing among panel manufacturers is increasing its layout of printed OLED, so there are some concerns about the supply chain.
TCL CSOT has teamed up with material manufacturers to develop solutions. For example, it uses more materials that are already in mass production to reduce the waste rate of upstream materials. At the same time, TCL Huaxing is also cooperating with suppliers to lay out new technologies and solve the problem of the stability of material supply.
The outside world once described TCL's investment in printed OLED as a huge gamble, with commercialization not yet mature enough and the prospects not clear enough. But in Li Dongsheng’s view,TCL is not a "gamble" that is resigned to fate, but a "fight" after calculated risks, striving for a future driven by technology to achieve industry disruption.
As Zhou Hua, chief analyst of CINNO Research, said: "In the future, the competition between Chinese and Korean companies will shift from price and production capacity competition in the past to competition in technology routes. This is an opportunity for China's OLED industry to catch up with South Korea's OLED industry."
This breakout battle around next-generation display technology has just begun. Printed OLED has also reached the crossroads of large-scale mass production. TCL Huaxing, which no longer wants to be a follower, is building its own technical barriers and moats through a road rarely traveled.