Category Archives: FPDs and TFTs

Communication with suppliers in the Ukraine and China have continued to verify expected neon shortages occurring toward the end of 2016. Although supply appears stable now, inventories purchased during the second half of 2015 will deplete inventories on the supplier side toward the end of this year.

“Projections of historical Neon growth can no longer be used to predict the future,” said TECHCET’s President/CEO, Lita Shon-Roy. “Even with the recovery of the Neon supply chain, Neon conservation actions, and new sources in China, we predict that Neon demand will grow faster than Neon supply,” she added. Inventory has caused pricing to degrade, however, prices are expected to rise.

The factors affecting the supply side, along with the demand drivers, are covered in the recently updated Critical Materials Report on Neon, and will be featured at the Critical Materials Conference May 5-6 in Hillsboro.

The largest and most rapidly growing Neon demand drivers are Lasik, OLED/FPD (displays) and DUV lithography. However, Neon gas consumed by DUV excimer laser gases is growing at a faster pace and represents more than 90% of world’s Neon consumption.

Semiconductor lithographic use of Neon is increasing more rapidly than expected for several reasons including the delay of EUVL while demand for finer line width patterning is increasing. In addition, new consumer related markets drive increased usage of legacy device processing. Each increase in the number of lithographic steps increases the need for DUV lithography, and drives up the volume demand for Neon. This is true for V-NAND process flows, as well as DRAM and Logic devices dependent on multi-patterning. Next General Lithography reports continue to support that DUV will keep supporting the industry with potential SAOP being used at the 7nm node.

About The Critical Materials Conference

The Critical Materials Conference, scheduled for May 5-6, in Hillsboro, Oregon is an open forum portion of the Critical Materials Council meetings. Registration is open to the public. For more information on the CMC Conference please go to www.cmcfabs.org/seminars/ .

Unit demand for display glass used for liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs, desktop monitors, mobile PCs and other major large panel applications is forecast to fall in 2016. However average diagonal screen sizes for each application are expanding, which means display glass area demand will continue to increase, even as unit shipments decrease. Total LCD glass capacity is now matching glass area demand, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), a global source of critical information and insight.

Area demand for glass used in LCD panels is forecast to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13 percent from 2015 to 2018. Average LCD TV screen size is expected to increase from 39.3 inches in 2015 to 40.8 inches in 2016, according to the latest quarterly IHS Display Glass Market Tracker.

“Because manufacturing LCD glass requires special tanks for the LCD substrates used in processing, the manufacturing cost of LCD glass is higher than for other materials, and tank investment can be a risky proposition for glass makers,” said Tadashi Uno, senior analyst, IHS Technology. “For these reasons, LCD glass manufacturers are looking to increase the capacity of existing tanks, rather than making additional investments in new tanks.”

As competition in this market intensifies, panel makers are suffering from module price reductions. As profits decline, major large panel makers are not only pressuring vendors to reduce the costs of materials and components, they are also trying to save on glass costs by manufacturing thinner LCD glass. Between 2012 and 2014, major panel makers successfully shifted glass substrate thickness from 0.7 millimeters to 0.5 millimeters; panel makers are now trying to create display glass that is even thinner, decreasing thickness from 0.5 millimeters to 0.4 millimeters. “Samsung is the first company out of the gate with these new efforts, but other major panel makers will soon follow,” Uno said.

Global flat panel display (FPD) market revenue is expected to shrink by 6 percent year over year in 2016 to $120 billion. While revenue has been declining for some time, this year it will reach its lowest level since 2012, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE:IHS), a global source of critical information and insight.

“The industry has begun to question whether the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil will spur panel demand, as Brazil’s domestic situation and economy are worsening,” said Ricky Park, director of large display research for IHS Technology. “The prolonged decline in oil prices and the resulting economic downturn in oil-producing countries, together with the economic slowdown in emerging markets, continue to adversely affect display demand. There is also growing concern about China’s sluggish domestic market, and the free fall in panel prices that began last year is also hampering market growth.”

Due to the panel oversupply situation, panel prices declined more rapidly in the second half of 2015 than during any other year since 2008. In December of 2015, for example, the average price for open-cell 32-inch liquid crystal displays (LCDs) tumbled nearly 41 percent since the previous year.

According to the IHS Display Long-term Demand Forecast Tracker, stronger demand for large ultra-high definition (UHD) and 8K panels could slow declining average selling prices. Overall global display demand could also pick up after 2016, if the global economy improves as expected. Furthermore, as the demand for large TV panels rises, FPD shipment area is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5 percent, from 2015 to 2020.

FPD_Demand_Chart

Liquid crystal display (LCD) manufacturer inventory adjustments and continued slowing demand are causing TV and information technology (IT) display prices to fall, further eroding panel makers’ profitability. TV and IT display shipments in the first quarter (Q1) of 2016 are expected to decline 8 percent compared to the same period last year, to register just 196 million units. This is the first time since 2009 that panel shipments have declined in the first quarter year over year, according to IHS Inc., a global source of critical information and insight.

Although unit shipments of LCD display also declined last year, shipment area increased thanks to the growing popularity of large-screen TV sets, which sustained the display industry. Large-area TFT LCD shipment area increased by 5 percent in 2015 year over year, while unit shipments declined 4 percent, reaching 694 million units, according to the IHS Large Area Display Market Tracker. “Due to global currency exchange issues and slower demand from emerging markets, global TV display demand in 2015 was lower than initially forecast,” said Yoonsung Chung, director of large area display research for IHS Technology.

“TV panel demand in early of 2016 will continue to falter, because of excess panel inventory carried over from last year,” said Linda Lin, senior analyst, large displays, IHS Technology. “To control the deficits caused by overproduction of IT and TV panels, panel makers will have to reduce fab utilization early this year, since average selling prices are nearing manufacturing costs.”

Notebook PC panel shipments are expected to experience the most serious year-over-year decline, falling 14 percent to reach 40.9 million units in Q1 2016. OLED TV panels will be the only display segment forecast to experience growth in Q1.

TV_IT_LCD_Shipment_Forecast

The oversupply in LCD TV panels is forecast to continue into the first quarter, according to the latest IHS TV Display Supply Chain Tracker – China. The leading six TV manufacturers in China expect to lower their panel purchasing by 37 percent quarter over quarter and 15 percent year over year. Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics will slightly reduce panel purchases in Q1.

“Leading display manufacturers have not dramatically reduced fab utilization in the fourth quarter of last year, but the situation will change in the first quarter of 2016, as they will be pressed to reduce the loading,” Lin said. “The Chinese New Year holiday, planned fab maintenance and repairs, and the transition to thinner glass will also reduce output. BOE, ChinaStar, CEC-Panda and other leading Chinese manufacturers that are ramping up new Gen8 fabs will have to reduce their capacity utilization in the first quarter to fight declining panel prices and shipments.”

The growing popularity of smartwatches, fitness monitors and other wearable applications is driving up shipments of the displays used in these devices, from 34 million units in 2015 to 39 million in 2016. Nearly six out of 10 displays used in wearable devices in 2015 were active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) panels used in smartwatches, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), a global source of critical information and insight.

“Smartwatch manufacturers are increasingly turning to AMOLED displays because they are thinner, lighter, have high color-performance and consume less power than other types of displays,” said Jerry Kang, principal analyst for IHS Technology. “This trend will continue in 2016, since flexible AMOLED display free-form design process enables narrower form factors and even folding bezels.”

Apple, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Microsoft have all adopted flexible AMOLED displays for their smartwatches. Supported by this widespread adoption by leading manufacturers, unit shipments of flexible AMOLED displays for smartwatches are expected to increase from 23 million units in 2016 to 80 million in 2024.

Smartwatches are expected to continue to lead the wearable display market in the coming years. Unit shipments are forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22 percent from 2015 and reach 118 million units in 2024, according to the IHS Wearable Display Market & Technology Report. Even with this growth, total unit shipments of smartwatch displays will only equal 5 percent of smartphone display shipments in 2024.

Wearable_Display_Shipments

Flat-panel display (FPD) equipment spending this year will reach its highest level since 2011, according to IHS Inc., a global source of critical information and insight. Driving this growth are two trends: In South Korea there is a rush to expand capacity to produce high volumes of flexible active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) panels for smartphone applications; while in China, supported by a wide variety of local government incentives, panel makers are continuing to build new factories to produce a varied portfolio of flat panel display technologies and panel sizes, IHS forecasts that FPD equipment spending will reach $11.2 billion in 2016, rising to $11.6 billion in 2017 – almost four times the sum spent in 2012.

Now that Samsung Display has made rigid AMOLED displays highly cost competitive with liquid crystal displays (LCD), many leading smartphone brands are showing strong interest in adopting the technology. Although plastic based flexible AMOLEDs are still more expensive than rigid AMOLED displays, they offer the extra benefits of being more rugged, thinner and lighter than glass based panels. Combined with better image quality and design flexibility, both glass and plastic based AMOLED displays are expected to rapidly gain market share in the high-end smartphone market. The FPD supply chain is reacting to this technology shift, adding enough capacity to produce more than 300 million additional flexible AMOLEDs per year by 2018.

“Thanks to direct investments, technology subsidies, low interest-rate loans, tax exemptions and other government-sponsored support mechanisms, ten different companies will be building 15 new factories in China over the next two years,” said Charles Annis, senior director at IHS Technology. “Chinese FPD producers are targeting panel self-sufficiency for the country’s enormous consumer electronics industry.”

Based on the latest IHS Display Supply Demand & Equipment Tracker, 60 percent of 2016 equipment spending will be used to build LCD-dedicated fabs and 40 percent will be invested in AMOLED or AMOLED-LCD dual use facilities. By 2017 the ratio of LCD to AMOLED fabs will reach parity. China is forecast to account for about 70 percent of total equipment spending in 2016 and 2017, and South Korea will account for most of the remainder.

The volatile FPD equipment industry is in the midst one of its highest up-cycles in years, which is a sharp contrast to the quickly deteriorating panel market that is already suffering from oversupply and severe price declines. This is not an unusual situation, due to the long lead-time required to build new factories, while market conditions can change much more rapidly.

“A major industry concern in this cycle is the market may be slow to rationalize itself,” Annis said. “Chinese government policies insulate Chinese panel makers from some financial concerns and investment in flexible AMOLED is not really related to the supply-and-demand issues. If this slow rationalization depresses panel maker profitability much longer, it eventually will negatively affect not only panel makers, but their suppliers as well.”

FPD_Equp_Revenue

An engineering research team at the University of Alberta has invented a new transistor that could revolutionize thin-film electronic devices.

Their findings, published in the prestigious science journal Nature Communications, could open the door to the development of flexible electronic devices with applications as wide-ranging as display technology to medical imaging and renewable energy production.

The team was exploring new uses for thin film transistors (TFT), which are most commonly found in low-power, low-frequency devices like the display screen you’re reading from now. Efforts by researchers and the consumer electronics industry to improve the performance of the transistors have been slowed by the challenges of developing new materials or slowly improving existing ones for use in traditional thin film transistor architecture, known technically as the metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET).

But the U of A electrical engineering team did a run-around on the problem. Instead of developing new materials, the researchers improved performance by designing a new transistor architecture that takes advantage of a bipolar action. In other words, instead of using one type of charge carrier, as most thin film transistors do, it uses electrons and the absence of electrons (referred to as “holes”) to contribute to electrical output. Their first breakthrough was forming an ‘inversion’ hole layer in a ‘wide-bandgap’ semiconductor, which has been a great challenge in the solid-state electronics field.

Once this was achieved, “we were able to construct a unique combination of semiconductor and insulating layers that allowed us to inject “holes” at the MOS interface,” said Gem Shoute, a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering who is lead author on the article. Adding holes at the interface increased the chances of an electron “tunneling” across a dielectric barrier. Through this phenomenon, a type of quantum tunnelling, “we were finally able to achieve a transistor that behaves like a bipolar transistor.”

“It’s actually the best performing [TFT] device of its kind–ever,” said materials engineering professor Ken Cadien, a co-author on the paper. “This kind of device is normally limited by the non-crystalline nature of the material that they are made of”

The dimension of the device itself can be scaled with ease in order to improve performance and keep up with the need of miniaturization, an advantage that modern TFTs lack. The transistor has power-handling capabilities at least 10 times greater than commercially produced thin film transistors.

Electrical engineering professor Doug Barlage, who is Shoute’s PhD supervisor and one of the paper’s lead authors, says his group was determined to try new approaches and break new ground. He says the team knew it could produce a high-power thin film transistor–it was just a matter of finding out how.

“Our goal was to make a thin film transistor with the highest power handling and switching speed possible. Not many people want to look into that, but the raw properties of the film indicated dramatic performance increase was within reach,” he said. “The high quality sub 30 nanometre (a human hair is 50,000 nanometres wide) layers of materials produced by Professor Cadien’s group enabled us to successfully try these difficult concepts”

In the end, the team took advantage of the very phenomena other researchers considered roadblocks.

“Usually tunnelling current is considered a bad thing in MOSFETs and it contributes to unnecessary loss of power, which manifests as heat,” explained Shoute. “What we’ve done is build a transistor that considers tunnelling current a benefit.”

The team has filed a provisional patent on the transistor. Shoute says the next step is to put the transistor to work “in a fully flexible medium and apply these devices to areas like biomedical imaging, or renewable energy.”

The ongoing issue of liquid crystal display (LCD) oversupply — exacerbated by China’s aggressive investment in production capacity as well as high fab utilization — will continue well into 2016. The supply of large-area LCD is expected to be 14 percent greater than demand in 2016, up from 12 percent in 2015, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), a global source of critical informational and insight.

Chinese LCD suppliers are maintaining high manufacturing targets and expanding capacity, partly thanks to Chinese government subsidies for startup and infrastructure costs. On the other hand, LCD TV demand, particularly in Russia, Brazil and other emerging countries, has not grown as expected, because of currency depreciation and slow economic recovery.

“Panel prices have declined to the degree where the break-even point for manufacturers was reached in the fourth quarter of 2015,” said Yoshio Tamura, displays director for IHS Technology. “Due to declining value of currencies in emerging countries, demand for higher priced LCD TVs will not rebound in 2016. Even so, Chinese panel makers are not planning to lower fab utilization anytime soon to expand market share, which means large-area LCD manufacturers will be in the red in 2016.”

Chinese LCD suppliers are expected to adjust fab utilization in the middle of 2016, according to the IHS Display Supply Demand & Equipment Tracker, and LCD oversupply will be eased in the second half of 2017. “If Chinese manufacturers don’t lower their fab utilization within 2016, there will be an even greater negative impact on global LCD suppliers’ profit margins,” Tamura said.

While conventional thin film transistor liquid crystal (TFT LCD) displays are rapidly trending towards commoditization and currently suffering from declining prices and margins, China is quickly adding capacity in all flat-panel display (FPD) manufacturing segments. Supported by financial incentives from local governments, Chinese TFT capacity is projected to grow 40 percent per year between 2010 and 2018. In 2010 China accounted for just 4 percent of total TFT capacity. However by 2018, China is forecast to become the largest FPD-producing region in the world, accounting for 35 percent of the global market, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), a global source of critical information and insight.

While Chinese capacity expands, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have restricted investments to focus mainly on advanced technologies. TFT capacity for flat panel display (FPD) production in these countries is forecast to grow on average at less than 2 percent per year between 2010 and 2018.

Based on the latest IHS Display Supply Demand & Equipment Tracker, BOE Technology Group stands out as the leading producer of FPDs in China. With a capacity growth rate of 44 percent per year between 2010 and 2018, BOE will become the main driver for Chinese share gains. By 2018, the company will have ramped up more FPD capacity than any other producers, except for LG Display and Samsung Display.

“Despite growing concerns of oversupply for the next several years in most parts of the display industry, there is still little evidence that Chinese makers are reconsidering or scaling back their ambitious expansion plans,” said Charles Annis, senior director at IHS. “On the contrary, there continues to be a steady stream of announcements of new factory plans by various regional governments and panel makers.”

In China, the central government has generally encouraged investment in FPDs, in order to shift the economy to higher technology manufacturing, to increase domestic supply and to support gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Provincial governments have become the main enabler of capacity expansion through product and technology subsidies, joint ventures and other direct investments, by providing land and facilities and through tax incentives. In return, new FPD fabs increase tax revenue, support land value appreciation, increase employment and spur the local economy. The economic benefits generated from the feedback loop between local governments, panel makers and new FPD factories are still considered sufficiently positive in China to warrant application of significant public resources.

“China currently produces only about a third of the FPD panels it consumes. However, by rapidly expanding capacity, panel makers and government officials are expecting to double domestic production rates in the next few years and are also looking to export markets,” Annis said. “How excessive global supply, falling prices and lower profitability will affect these plans over time is not yet exactly clear. Even so, there is now so much new capacity in the pipeline that China will almost certainly become the top producer of FPDs by 2018.”

The IHS Display Supply Demand & Equipment Tracker covers metrics used to evaluate supply, demand, and capital spending for all major FPD technologies and applications.

Researchers from Holst Centre (set up by TNO and imec), imec and CMST, imec’s associated lab at Ghent University, have demonstrated the world’s first stretchable and conformable thin-film transistor (TFT) driven LED display laminated into textiles. This paves the way to wearable displays in clothing providing users with feedback.

Wearable devices such as healthcare monitors and activity trackers are now a part of everyday life for many people. Today’s wearables are separate devices that users must remember to wear. The next step forward will be to integrate these devices into our clothing. Doing so will make wearable devices less obtrusive and more comfortable, encouraging people to use them more regularly and, hence, increasing the quality of data collected. A key step towards realizing wearable devices in clothing is creating displays that can be integrated into textiles to allow interaction with the wearer.

“Wearable devices allow people to monitor their fitness and health so they can live full and active lives for longer. But to maximize the benefits wearables can offer, they need to be able to provide feedback on what users are doing as well as measuring it. By combining imec’s patented stretch technology with our expertise in active-matrix backplanes and integrating electronics into fabrics, we’ve taken a giant step towards that possibility,” says Edsger Smits, Senior research scientist at Holst Centre.

The conformable display is very thin and mechanically stretchable. A fine-grain version of the proven meander interconnect technology was developed by the CMST lab at Ghent University and Holst Centre to link standard (rigid) LEDs into a flexible and stretchable display. The LED displays are fabricated on a polyimide substrate and encapsulated in rubber, allowing the displays to be laminated in to textiles that can be washed. Importantly, the technology uses fabrication steps that are known to the manufacturing industry, enabling rapid industrialization.

Following an initial demonstration at the Society for Information Display’s Display Week in San Jose, USA earlier this year, Holst Centre has presented the next generation of the display at the International Meeting on Information Display (IMID) in Daegu, Korea, 18-21 August 2015. Smaller LEDs are now mounted on an amorphous indium-gallium-zinc oxide (a-IGZO) TFT backplane that employs a two-transistor and one capacitor (2T-1C) pixel engine to drive the LEDs. These second-generation displays offer higher pitch and increased, average brightness. The presentation will feature a 32×32 pixel demonstrator with a resolution of 13 pixels per inch (ppi) and average brightness above 200 candelas per square meter (cd/m2). Work is ongoing to further industrialize this technology.

The world’s first stretchable and conformable thin-film transistor (TFT) driven LED display laminated into textiles developed by Holst Centre, imec and CSMT.

The world’s first stretchable and conformable thin-film transistor (TFT) driven LED display laminated into textiles developed by Holst Centre, imec and CSMT.