Samsung is working on the production of OLED panels with quantum dots for TVs
Samsung confirms that it is working on the production of large OLED panels with quantum dots or at least has plans for this. Rumors about this have been circulating for some time and the CEO of Samsung Display has now confirmed it.
Lee Dong-hoon, CEO of Samsung Display, told The Korea Herald that his company is “making good efforts” to release OLED panels with quantum dots in the near future. Presumably, Samsung is in any case busy with the preparations, although Lee did not want to say anything about the concrete investment plans. There is also nothing known about when the first panels will roll off the production line and when consumer televisions with OLED panels produced by Samsung will be released for the first time.
According to the Korean newspaper, Samsung has decided to close a production line of LCDs in South Korea’s Chungcheongnam-do province with a monthly capacity of 90,000 units. Samsung would also close another production line with a monthly capacity of 30,000 units from next month. One or both of these production lines are reportedly being converted for the production of the OLED panels.
The Korean news platform The Elec previously reported on a more extensive plan whereby all LCD production lines produced by Samsung South Korea will gradually be adapted for the production of OLED panels. According to sources, the purchase orders for the equipment necessary for this turnaround would be implemented in October. If these are indeed the plans of Samsung Display, then that does not have to mean the end of Samsung’s LCD TVs, since the manufacturer can also purchase the necessary panels from Chinese manufacturers, for example.
At the beginning of last year there was already a rumor that during the CES in January 2018, Samsung showed prototypes of OLED TVs with screen diagonals of 55 and 65″ behind closed doors. Samsung would use blue OLEDs with red and green color filters, and quantum dots. Samsung calls this technology QD-OLED and would consider it an intermediate step towards TVs based on microLEDs.Samsung confirmed in April last year that it was conducting research into combining quantum dots and OLED panels.
According to Samsung, the QD OLED TVs can display better colors than the existing OLED TVs from other manufacturers, which involve white OLEDs with a color filter. The maximum brightness would also be better than that of OLED TVs based on LG Display’s OLED panels. LG owns the patent for the production of OLED panels with white OLEDs, which means that Samsung cannot produce its own panels based on this technology.
That is why Samsung has to use RGB OLEDs, the disadvantage of which is that the quality deteriorates because blue, green and red do not wear out evenly. Blue OLEDs have a disadvantage compared to red and green OLEDs in terms of lifespan and efficiency, but Samsung may have overcome that. This was probably partly due to an investment in Cynora, a company that would produce blue tadf-ole emitters, which would largely or completely eliminate the shortcomings of blue oleds.