Category Archives: Displays

Soft electronic devices, such as a smartphone on your wrist and a folding screen in your pocket, are looking to much improve your lifestyle in the not-too-distant future. That is, if we could find ways to make electronic devices out of soft organic materials instead of the existing rigid inorganic materials.

Conducting polymers are a promising candidate that could be utilized for these next-generation applications because they are malleable, lightweight, and can conduct electricity, although their charge carrier mobility is intrinsically lower than that of inorganic materials. Various studies therefore have focused on how to boost the speed at which the charge carriers move in conducting polymers. Many researchers have attempted to enhance the charge carrier mobility by increasing polymers’ crystallinity, which is the degree of structural order. However, this approach is inherently restrictive in terms of mechanical properties. In other words, an increase in the crystallinity results in a decrease of the mechanical resilience, at least according to the conventional norm.

A team of researchers with the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), consisting of Profs. Taiho Park and Chan Eon Park with their students Sung Yun Son and Yebyeol Kim, has found a way to solve this dilemma and developed a low crystalline conducting polymer that shows high-field effect mobility. Their findings were recently published as the cover article in the Journal of American Chemical Societyand highlighted in the Spotlights.

To improve charge transport in a low-crystalline conducting polymer, the researchers took a simple yet unconventional approach. They introduced monomers without side chains into the polymer and utilized unconventional localized aggregates as stepping-stones to expedite charge transport in the microstructure of the polymer. Park et al. found that the resulting increase in the backbone planarity and chain connectivity of the polymer gave rise to enhanced charge transport along and between the polymer chains.

Their findings provide not only a greater understanding of charge transport dynamics in low-crystalline conducting polymers but also a new strategy in molecular design that allows faster charge transport without the loss of mechanical advantages. Taiho Park and Chan Eon Park, the two corresponding authors of this research, anticipate that their study opens up numerous possibilities and will bring forth new research, solutions, and applications for soft electronics.

TouchSystems, a provider of professional-grade touch display and digital signage solutions, announced today the latest generation of its P-Series large format touch displays. The 46-inch P4630P-3 touch display is designed for 24/7 operation and features 10-point multi-touch projected capacitive (PCAP) touch technology, OPS compatibility, built-in thermal management, speakers and more in a bezel-free chassis.

The new P4630P-3 features NECs energy efficient LED edge-lighting technology and programmable run time increasing efficiency. The zero-bezel integrated PCAP sensor provides fast touch response without adding bulk. Paired with an optional OPS device, customers will benefit from reduced installation costs and reduced cost of ownership in an aesthetically pleasing complete solution.

The P4630P-3 is ideal for high-traffic areas such as public use terminals, retail outlets, hospitality, kiosks, and healthcare facilities. The display features internal temperature sensors with self-diagnostics and fan-based technology for increased protection against overheating to maximize the lifetime of the investment.

Adding to the display performance, the P4630P-3 features integrated Open Pluggable Specification (OPS) compatibility for best-in-class connectivity. Customers can easily install the media player of their choice without the need for additional brackets, cable management, or related hardware, further reducing implementation costs and providing for cleaner installation.

“This is the ideal product for wide variety of interactive applications,” Said Carol Nordin, President of TouchSystems. “Designed for versatility and ease of integration, featuring durable bezel free PCAP touch technology, 24/7 operation, energy efficient LED backlighting, multiple mounting options and so much more.”

To bolster the high-performance of the P4630P-3 multi-touch display features a 3-year parts and labor warranty that includes the backlight.

Although liquid-crystal display (LCD) has dominated mobile phone displays for more than 15 years, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display technology is set to become the leading smartphone display technology in 2020, according to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO). AMOLED displays with a low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) backplane will account for more than one-third (36 percent) of all smartphone displays shipped in 2020, becoming the most-used display technology in smartphone displays, surpassing a-Si (amorphous silicon) thin-film transistor (TFT) LCD and LTPS TFT LCD displays.

“While OLED is currently more difficult to manufacture, uses more complicated materials and chemical processes, and requires a keen focus on yield-rate management, it is an increasingly attractive technology for smartphone brands,” said David Hsieh, senior director, IHS Markit. “OLED displays are not only thinner and lighter than LCD displays, but they also boast better color performance and enable flexible display form factors that can lead to more innovative design.”

Samsung Electronics has already adopted OLED displays in its smartphone models, and there is also increasing demand from Chinese Huawei, OPPO, Vivo, Meizu and other smartphone brands. Apple is also now widely expected to use OLED displays in its upcoming iPhone models.

At one time, OLED displays were entirely glass-based and in terms of performance, there was little difference between LCD and OLED displays. Now, flexible OLED displays made from thinner and lighter plastic are enabled and have drawn Apple’s attention. “Apple’s upcoming adoption of OLED displays will be a milestone for OLED in the display industry,” Hsieh said.

Samsung Display, LG Display, Sharp, JDI, BOE, Tianma, GVO, Truly, and CSOT are also starting to ramp up their AMOLED manufacturing capacities and devote more resources to technology development. Samsung Display’s enormous sixth-generation A3 AMOLED fab, for example, will enable even more AMOLED displays to reach the market. Global AMOLED manufacturing capacity will increase from 5 million square meters in 2014 to 30 million square meters in 2020.

“Many display manufacturers were investing in LTPS LCD, thinking it would overtake a-Si technology,” Hsieh said. “However, many of the fabs under construction, especially in China, have had to change their plans to add OLED evaporation and encapsulation tools, because OLED penetration has been more rapid than previously expected.”

Today SEMI announced registration opened for Europe’s largest electronics manufacturing exhibition, SEMICON Europa (25-26 October) in Grenoble. Featuring over 100 hours of technical sessions and presentations, SEMICON Europa includes semiconductor equipment and materials as well as additional topics, such as Imaging, Power Electronics, and Advanced Packaging. Newly restructured Fab Management Forum and a new flexible hybrid electronics conference, 2016FLEX.  Innovation Village returns, focused on startups and emerging technologies. Register now to take advantage of early-bird pricing for conferences, forums, and select sessions.

SEMICON Europa’s Fab Manager Forum has expanded to become the Fab Management Forum, to address a wider audience – with best practices for management, organization, and manufacturing in new wafer fabs.  SEMICON Europa’s Advanced Packaging Forum is more important than ever in the industry’s efforts to shrink devices to smaller form factors, lower power consumption, and flexible designs.

The new flexible hybrid electronics conference 2016FLEX Europe will debut at SEMICON Europa, replacing the Plastics Electronics Conference.  Program topics focus on the integration of silicon electronics onto flexible and printed substrates in a wide range of applications including: automotive, medical, wearables, IoT and others.

SEMICON Europa rotates between Grenoble (France) and Dresden (Germany), two of Europe’s largest electronic clusters. With the support of public and private stakeholders across Europe, the new SEMICON Europa enables exhibitors to reach new audiences and business partners and take full advantage of the strong microelectronic clusters in Europe. Over 400 exhibitors at SEMICON Europa represent the suppliers of Europe’s leading electronics companies. Learn more about exhibiting at SEMICON Europa.

To learn more about SEMICON Europa (exhibition or registration), please visit: www.semiconeuropa.org/en. Register now to secure your space and take advantage of SEMICON Europa’s early-bird pricing and exhibition opportunities.

As the popularity and penetration of wearable and mobile devices increase, so too will demand for innovative flexible displays. In fact, revenue from flexible displays is expected to increase more than 300 percent, from just $3.7 billion in 2016 to $15.5 billion in 2022. Flexible displays will comprise 13 percent of total display market revenue in 2020, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS).

Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics launched the first smartphones with flexible active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays in 2013, and both companies continue to adapt flexible AMOLED displays for their smartphones, smartwatches and fitness trackers. Inspired by these successes, other mobile manufacturers are now developing their own flexible-display devices.

“The varieties of flexible displays include screens that are bendable, curved and edge-curved, but fully foldable form factors are expected within the next two years,” said Jerry Kang, principal analyst of display research for IHS Technology. “Only a few suppliers — including Samsung Display, LG Display, E-ink and Futaba — are now regularly supplying flexible displays to the market. However, many more panel makers are now attempting to build flexible display capacity, leveraging the latest AMOLED display technology.”

According to the IHS Flexible Display Market Tracker, flexible displays are primarily used in smartphones and smartwatches in 2016; however, use in other applications, including tablet PCs, near-eye virtual reality devices, automotive monitors and OLED TVs is expected by 2022. “Consumer device manufacturers will eventually need to innovate their conventionally designed flat, rectangular form-factors to make way for the latest curved, foldable and rollable screens,” Kang said.

Flex_Display_Chart_IHS

By Ed Korczynski, Sr. Technical Editor

Medical and health/wellness monitoring devices provide critical information to improve quality-of-life and/or human life-extension. To meet the anticipated product needs of wearable comfort and relative affordability, sensors and signal-processing circuits generally need to be flexible. The SEMICON West 2016 Flexible Electronics Forum provided two days of excellent presentations by industry experts on these topics, and the second day focused on the medical applications of flexible circuits.

Flexible ultra-thin silicon

While thin-film flexible circuits made with printed thin-film transistors (TFT) have been developed, they are inherently large and slow compared to silicon ICs. Beyond dozens or hundreds of transistors it is far more efficient to use traditional silicon wafer manufacturing technology…if the wafers can be repeatedly thinned down below 50 microns without damage.

Richard Chaney, general manager of American Semiconductor, presented on a “FleX Silicon-on-Polymer” approach that provides a replacement polymer substrate below <1 micron thin silicon to allow for handling and assembly. Processed silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers are front-side temporarily bonded to a “handle-wafer”, then back-side grinded to the buried oxide layer, then oxide chemically removed, and then an application-specific polymer is applied to the backside. After removing the FleX wafer from the handle-wafer, the polymer provides physical support for dicing and the rest of assembly.

For the last few years, the company has been doing R&D and limited pilot production by shipping lots of wafers through partner applications labs, but in the second-half of 2015 acquired a new manufacturing facility in Boise, ID. Process tools are being installed, and the first product dice are “FleX-OPA” operational amplifiers. Initial work was supported by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), but in the last 12-18 months the company has seen a major increase in sample requests and capability discussions from commercial companies.

Printed possibilities

Bob Street of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) presented on “Printed hybrid arrays for health monitoring.” There are of course fundamentally different sensor needs for different applications, and PARC is working on many thin-film transducers and circuits:

Gas sensing – outer environment or human breath,

Optical sensing – monitoring body signals such as blood oxygen,

Electrochemical sensing – detect specific enzymes, and

Pressure/Accelerometers – extreme physical conditions such as head concussions

“There are many and various ways that you can do health monitoring,” explained Street. “There will be sensors, and local electronics with amplifiers and logic and switches. One of the prime features of printing is that it is a versatile system for depositing different materials.”

PARC has built an amazing printing system for R&D that includes different functional dispense heads for ink-jet, aerosol, and extrusion so that a wide varieties of viscosities can be handled. The system also include integrated UV-cure capability. Printing tends to have the right spatial resolution on the scale of 50-100 microns for the target applications spaces.

PARC worked on an early system to monitor for head concussions and store event information. They used printed PVDF material to print accelerometers and pressure sensors, as well as ferroelectric analog memory. Various commercially available materials are used to print organic thin-film transistors (OTFT) for digital logic. For complementary digital logic, different metals would conventionally be needed for contacts to the n-type and p-type TFTs, but PARC found an additive layer that could be applied to one type such that a single metal could be used for both.

A gas sensor prototype that can can detect 100-1000ppm of carbon-monoxide was printed using carbon nano-tubes (CNT) as load resistors. They printed a 4-stage complementary inverter to provide gain, using 7 different materials. “This is a case where a very simple device uses many layers,” explained Street. “Four drops of one materials does it, so you wouldn’t look at using a subtractive process for this.”

Rigid/flex integration

Dr. Azar Alizadeh, GE Global Rsearch, presented on “Manufacturing of wearable sensors for human health & performance monitoring.” Wearables in healthcare applications include medical, high exertion, occupational, and wellness/fitness. The Figure shows a flexible blood pressure-sensor that measures from a finger-tip. Future flexible devices are expected to provide more nuanced biometric information to enable personalized medicine, but any commercially viable disposable device will have to cost <$10 to drive widespread adoption. Costs must be limited because just in the US alone the annual amount spent to serve ~50M patients in hospitals is >$880B.

Finger-tip optical blood-pressure sensor created with printed photodetector by GE Corp.

Finger-tip optical blood-pressure sensor created with printed photodetector by GE Corp.

By Shannon Davis, Web Editor

Kateeva is out to change the way displays are being made, and during Tuesday’s Silicon Innovation Forum keynote, Kateeva President and COO Conor Madigan, PhD, laid out how their YIELDJet inkjet system is making that happen.

In recent years, OLED displays have captured the imagination of the industry because of the materials’ capability to enable new kinds of form factors, specifically flexible displays. One of the compelling characteristics of OLED is designers can make a display on a thin piece of plastic, freeing them from rigid glass.

Another compelling aspect, Madigan explained, is that OLED displays have fewer subcomponents than their LCD counter parts, so manufacturing cost can be lower. And he believes inkjet technology will play a key role in making OLED more affordable. His company, Silicon Valley-based Kateeva, has focused their efforts on developing an inkjet platform for OLED manufacturing called YIELDJet, a completely different style of inkjet system.

Kateeva’s YIELDJet inkjet printing platform.

Kateeva’s YIELDJet inkjet printing platform.

When the concept of flexible OLEDs was first catching on, designers had some significant manufacturing obstacles to overcome, Madigan explained. Designers in R&D were using vacuum-based technique for depositing the films in the OLED structure.

“It was very slow; it required planarization to make a smooth surface, and this didn’t do that well,” said Madigan. “There were many particle defects, and the cost was high.”

Kateeva worked with adapting inkjet technology to this process. Madigan explained that YIELDJet uses individual droplets of ink in a pattern, merges that ink together, and then uses UV lights to cure into a single layer, which has improved the quality of the films.

“Nowadays, we’re focused on broadly enabling low cost, mass production OLEDs with inkjet printing,” Madigan said. “What we’re working on now is a general deposition platform for putting down patterned films at high speed over large areas, realizing the full potential of inkjet technology for the display industry.”

In developing Kateeva’s YIELDJet, Madigan said they focused on how the glass would be handled, how to perform maintenance on a printer system that would be completely enclosed in a nitrogen environment, and managing particle decontamination.

YIELDJet employs a technique that floats a panel of glass on a vacuum and pressure holds, holding it at the very edge, which significantly reduces the size of the system when compared to conventional system which requires glass be moved on a large, often bulky holder. To address accessibility of their complicated system, Kateeva engineers made the system fully automated and able to recover quickly if it needed to be opened up to air.

“It was a new thing to make a printer that was low particle contaminating,” said Madigan. “In one of these printers, you have about ten thousand nozzles, to do fast coating.”

Kateeva was able to develop techniques to monitor all of these nozzles simultaneously, resulting in completely uniform coatings and films.

“The analysis that we’ve done with our customers is that, once they can move to inkjet printing, then you’ll quickly see OLED come down to cost parity and even be below LCD in cost,” Madigan concluded.

PC shipments in India totalled nearly 2 million units in the first quarter of 2016, a 7.4 percent decrease over the first quarter of 2015, according to Gartner, Inc.

“Consumers accounted for 45 percent of total PC sales in the first quarter of 2016, down from 48 percent in the first quarter of 2015,” said Vishal Tripathi, research director at Gartner. “There was decline in both the enterprise and consumer segments in buying in the first quarter of 2016. With the first quarter being the end of the financial year for some companies, there were expectations that enterprises would exhaust their budgets. However, it did not have much of an impact on the PC market, and the market continues to face a challenging time.”

White boxes (including parallel imports), which accounted for 28 percent of the overall desktop market, declined 6 percent in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015. In the first quarter, mobile PCs declined by 13 percent year-on-year primarily due to a lack of enthusiasm in consumer buying. In the first quarter of 2016, PC vendors had excess inventory that was carried forward from the fourth quarter of 2015 . Gartner analysts believe that inventory will be carried forward into the second quarter of 2016.

HP was in the number one position in PC shipments in India in the first quarter of 2016 (see Table 1) due to a strong presence in channels and online consumer purchases.

Table 1

India PC Market Share Estimates for First Quarter of 2016 (Percentage of Shipments)

Vendors

1Q16 Market Share (%)

1Q15 Market Share (%)

HP

25.0

25.8

Dell

23.5

23.1

Lenovo

19.4

19.6

Acer

12.2

10.5

Others

19.9

21.0

Total

100.0

100.0

Gartner (June 2016)

Note: PC shipments include desk-based and mobile PCs.

Gigaphoton Inc., a major semiconductor lithography light source manufacturer, announced the successful development of a new series of excimer lasers, the GIGANEX series, an application of Gigaphoton’s highly reliable semiconductor lithography excimer laser technology. In addition, Gigaphoton announced shipment for low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS) at large-scale liquid crystal display (LCD) manufacturing plants, mounting the GIGANEX excimer lasers on ultra-compact laser annealing equipment from V-Technology Co., Ltd., a company listed in the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange as 7717.

In recent years, Gigaphoton has continued its development work to apply the technologies that arose with the semiconductor lithography excimer laser program to other fields. It has succeeded in developing an excimer laser for use in the ultra-compact laser annealing process for amorphous silicon (a-Si) membranes in FPD manufacturing. A prototype of this new excimer laser, successfully resulting from this development program and known as GIGANEX, has been delivered to a panel manufacturer. It was subsequently used to great effect, to create a prototype, in use at Display Week 2016, held this year from May 22 to 27 in the United States.

The new GIGANEX series excimer lasers for annealing was developed for exclusive use with equipment from V-Technology for use as a light source during the ultra-compact laser annealing process. By incorporating the ultra-compact laser annealing process characteristics into the existing a-Si panel manufacturing process to crystallize the a-Si into poly-silicon (p-Si), enables the manufacturing of incredibly detailed panels, such as 8K panels, which were previously impossible to create using older a-Si processes. The new process is also suited to larger panel production, affording support for large-scale manufacturing plants that manufacture TV panels ranging from 50 to 70 inches, diagonally. This could not have been possible with existing laser annealing processes.

Gigaphoton President and CEO Hitoshi Tomaru notes that he is extremely happy that Gigaphoton’s excimer laser, GIGANEX, has, ahead of its entry into new industries, advanced into the FPD industry and greatly contributed to the success of an LTPS thin-film transistor LCD panel prototype. He went on to say that, moving forward, GIGANEX will become a new solution for flat-panel display (FPD) manufacturing, and that he expects great things for the industry.

GIGANEX

The new GIGANEX excimer laser, which was developed using the immense technical prowess that resulted from Gigaphoton’s experience with semiconductor lithography, is a new brand of excimer laser that targets many fields, beyond FPD manufacturing, flexible device processes, and lithography. Working together with Gigaphoton’s partner companies to give rise to new innovations, Gigaphoton will rely on GIGANEX to provide unique solutions, expanding the possibilities for excimer lasers.

WPG Americas, Inc. (WPGA), a subsidiary of WPG Holdings, Asia’s number one electronics distributor, was recently awarded the Fastest Growing Revenue Recognition Award by Micron Technology, Inc.

From left: Lorenzo Ponzanelli, Rich Davis, Mike Bokan, John Balzotti, Dana Slater, Don Brady, Ian Basey and Jeff Bader

From left: Lorenzo Ponzanelli, Rich Davis, Mike Bokan, John Balzotti, Dana Slater, Don Brady, Ian Basey and Jeff Bader

This award, which recognizes WPGA’s continued efforts to grow their presence as a frontrunner in the semiconductor industry, was accepted on June 7, 2016 at the Crown Plaza in San Jose, CA. Don Brady, Director of Americas Distribution for Micron, presented the award.

“We are excited to have been recognized by Micron for our hard work this past year and we look forward to strengthening our relationships in the future,” said Rich Davis, President of WPGA.

Accepting on behalf of WPGA were Davis, Ian Basey, VP of Marketing, John Balzotti, VP Americas Sales, and Dana Slater, Product Line Manager. Present from the Micron team were Lorenzo Ponzanelli, Sr. Director of Worldwide Sales, Mike Bokan, VP Worldwide OEM Sales and Jeff Bader, VP Embedded Business Unit.

Headquartered in San Jose, CA, WPG Americas Inc. is a member of WPG Holdings, a $14.9B worldwide distributor of semiconductors, passive, electro-mechanical and display products.