Category Archives: Flexible Displays

January 17, 2013 – Printed, flexible, and organic electronics have garnered more than $7.5 billion in venture funding from 1996-2011, but funding has declined sharply from a peak in 2007, according to a report from Lux Research. Funding topped $990M in 2007, but lost a third of that value within four years to $626M in 2011.

"A number of high-profile failures like Konarka have soured many investors’ impressions of this space — cutting away some unwarranted hype, but potentially raising the hurdles for companies with more promising technologies to secure funds," stated Anthony Vicari, Lux Research associate and lead author of a new report examining investments and opportunities in printed, flexible, and organic electronics. He points to "glaring funding imbalances, with overfunding in areas such as organic photovoltaics, but promising technologies such as electrowetting and electrochromic displays haven’t received investment that matches their potential."

Lux will present a Webinar on Feb. 5 to discuss the report’s findings, but here’s some insights in a nutshell:

– Display technologies have huge potential. Electrowetting, electrochromic, and metal oxide thin-film transistors (MOTFTs) are potential gold mines, offering high technical performance and value relative to competing reflective displays and TFTs.

– Asian startups are underfunded. North America leads overall investment at $5.1B, or 67% of the world total. However, Asian start-ups, like OLED developers in South Korea, account for just $506M of investing. That indicates not a lack of innovation, but the need for an alternate funding model, Lux says.

– Dow, Samsung, and Intel are trendsetters. These three giants lead corporate venture capital (CVC) investors, with high levels of activity in this space. Their best bets have targeted the more promising, higher-potential technologies such as OLEDs and RFID.

January 11, 2012 – The annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas has become a mecca for all things electronic and digital, from useful to cool to just plain bizarre. Among the technologies at the confluence of cool and useful were two things that aim to rethink the PC model. (And for the cool/bizarre side of the CES spectrum, behold eatART’s rideable robot Mondo Spider.)

This year’s CES emphasized "designs that defied or pushed the limits of convention," with two clear examples, points out DisplaySearch’s Richard Shim: size-defying "phablets," and even more size-defying "table PCs."

The phablet — a combination of phone and tablet — got its start with Samsung’s Galaxy Note, which offered an expanded 5-in. OLED screen; the Galaxy Note II was even bigger at 5.5-in. At this year’s CES, the phablet took another screen-size step up thanks to China’s Huawei, which unveiled its Ascend Mate ,which has a 6.1-in. 1280 × 720 screen. (Huawei also touted its Ascend D2 with a 5-in., 1920 × 1080 display.) The Ascend D2 will be available in China later this month, followed by the Ascend Mate in February.

The "table PC," meanwhile, is essentially a supersized tablet, with the screensize of a large computer monitor. Sony’s Vaio Tap 20 (20-in. display) is now joined by Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Horizon with a 27-in. resistive touch-based display, and the company has a prototype 39-in. version planned for later this summer. Each of these "table PCs" can stand upright like an all-in-one desktop PC, but also laid down flat, Shim notes.

"Both the phablet and the table PC categories represent the extreme end of a form factor trend that we expect to see throughout 2013," Shim explains. "The traditional lines that have been used to define, categorize, and track devices are expected to only become more difficult to maintain," and suppliers will increasingly tinker with formfactors to find what resonates with consumers. (In his own CES research note, Barclays analyst CJ Muse acknowledged the interest shown in phablets, and likely reverberations they should cause among suppliers, along with "large screen touch, Next Gen TVs, and the Internet of everything.") Shim doesn’t expect these design tinkerings will greatly impact shipment trends in the near-term (DisplaySearch still sees notebook PC shipments dipping 5% Y/Y in 2013), but "we anticipate that brands can score image points and credibility with consumers for willing to be bold with design. That has translated to good fortune for Apple so it should not be underestimated."

(photos via DisplaySearch; credit photo #1 to Lori Grunin/CNet)

January 7, 2012 – As the annual Consumer Electronics Show and hordes of techie enthusiasts descends over Las Vegas this week, one display technology — 4K × 2K — is expected to grab most of the attention, says NPD DisplaySearch.

4K LCD TV shipments will exceed OLED TV shipments through 2015, the firm says, due to both delays by OLED TV makers and increased promotion of 4K LCD TVs. Many Chinese brands are currently launching their own products domestically. OLED TVs should start hitting the market in 2013, but with low volumes and high prices. Note that 4K technology can be applied to OLED TVs as well, and eventually will be introduced for some premium TV segments, the firm points out.

"The global TV market—and North America in particular—are experiencing either slow or negative growth in 2012, and brands are eager to demonstrate new technologies that might create a spike in demand," stated Paul Gagnon, Director for Global TV Research at NPD DisplaySearch. Gagnon added, “OLED TV was prominently featured during the previous two CES shows as the next-generation TV display technology, but the lack of market launch so far has caused several set makers to start emphasizing 4K×2K resolution TVs for premium market segments."

Forecast for OLED TV and 4K LCD TV. (Source: NPD DisplaySearch)

Overall TV demand is expected to fall in 2012, as consumers worldwide grapple with tough economic conditions and TV prices fall at only marginal rates. DisplaySearch estimates LCD TV shipments in 2012 were 205 million, slightly lower than in 2011, while plasma TV shipments sunk 24% to 13 million. The firm sees 2013 initially taking shape as a flat market due to persistent economic uncertainty, but ultimately smoothing into gradual growth as conditions improve and as price declines in the TV market accelerate.


TV shipment growth by technology. (Source: NPD DisplaySearch)

January 3, 2012 – Active matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays will continue to encroach upon LCD technology through small and medium-sized (9-in. and smaller) displays used in mobile phones, according to recent analysis by NPD DisplaySearch.

Total OLED display shipments are expected to reach 191 million in 2012, accounting for 8.4% of total small/medium displays. AMOLEDs will make up 6% all by themselves, having driven total OLED penetration into this market segment since 2010 and the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S phone, according to Yoonsung Chung, director, large-area displays & FPD materials for NPD DisplaySearch. Mobile phones continue to drive the OLED adoption, with mobile phone applications expected to make up 69% of the small/medium OLED market in 2012 and growing to 83% in 2015.

OLED penetration in small and medium display shipments by technology. (Source: NPD DisplaySearch)

Mass adoption of AMOLED technology, though, faces hurdles due to the higher cost and technical difficulty of manufacturing — successful entry takes five years on average, according to the firm. "Prior to the start of mass production of AMOLED displays for mobile phones, only passive-matrix OLED (PMOLED) displays were available, mostly used in applications such as mobile phone sub-displays, automobile displays, and some industrial and niche applications," Chung stated.

Samsung produces nearly all AMOLED displays today, but more players will be needed to continue to push the technology’s adoption — and indeed new panel makers will emerge in 2013 from Taiwan and China, Chung forecasts. He also predicts demand for "OLED applications for smartphones, amusement devices, digital still cameras, and home appliances."

Small/medium OLED display shipments by application. (Source: NPD DisplaySearch)

December 28, 2012 – The FlexTech Alliance has awarded 4D Technology (Tucson, AZ) a contract to develop an optical system that addresses a shortcoming in roll-to-roll (R2R) electronics manufacturing: in situ, high-resolution mapping of surface topography and defects on a moving, flexible web. The $956K development project, expected to be completed in early 2014, will enable new, real-time levels of process control and yield enhancement, according to the groups.

Surface metrology and defect detection of web materials in R2R are well-known needs for flexible electronics manufacturing. This project’s primary focus is on analyzing and measuring transparent substrates, but the partners claim it will be applicable to translucent and reflective materials. Suppliers and customers of web materials will be able to agree upon and implement practical specifications and quality metrics to ensure consistent materials (incoming and outgoing) at the lowest possible cost.

Surface roughness, defect density, and cleanliness, key parameters for R2R substrates, are difficult to measure with high-resolution on moving substrates, noted Malcolm J. Thompson, chief technical advisor to the FlexTech Alliance. “This project with 4D Technology was initiated in order to upgrade the equipment industry’s capability to provide a metrology tool that can be integrated into a manufacturing line.”

“The new metrology system, as an on-line instrument, will register, identify and classify defects for pre-processing and post-processing of transparent flexible web materials. This will help overcome current manufacturing obstacles by replacing qualitative specs and visual inspection methods with quantitative specs supported by data acquisition and analysis,” added James Millerd, PhD, president of 4D Technology.

December 12, 2012 – Increased tablet adoption, with Apple’s continued dominance and emergence by new players (see Google, Microsoft) are changing the mobile PC competitive landscape — and supply-chain partners are having to rethink their strategies to stay atop the game.

Competitive conflicts are now a big concern, points out Jeff Lin, value chain analyst at NPD DisplaySearch; he cites Samsung Display planning to reduce its share in Apple and increase support to captive brands and other external customers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. New competitors in the market will seek to emphasize touch notebooks and ultraslim devices in 2013, while entrenched mobile PC competitors (Lin points to HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Acer) need solid agreements with their own OEMs. Their collective demands will strain supply-chain logistics, from panels to OEMs, he notes.

“With 2013 business planning well underway, product portfolios, sales strategies, and sourcing plans for mobile PC brands will certainly impact the supply chain,” Lin noted. Top PC brands will see only 2% annual growth in 2012 for notebook PCs, and a -28% plunge in mini-notebook PCs — but tablet PC growth chugs on at 75%. In 2013, however, these PC companies are setting their sights higher, planning 16% Y/Y shipment increases on average for notebook PCs, while tablet PC growth "may be less impressive than in 2012,” he says.

LG Display was the top supplier of mobile PC panels, with more than a third of its shipments going to Apple. Still the clear leader in mobile PCs (defined as notebooks, tablets, and ultraslim PCs), Apple accounted for more than 84% of total tablet PC shipments in 2Q12 (primarily made by Foxconn). HP was second, with Quanta covering about 33% of its production. Foxconn led in all PC OEM production in 2Q12 with >85% of its volume from Apple’s new 9.7-in. iPad and iPad 2. (Quanta started making Google’s Nexus 7-in. tablet PC in 2Q12.)

OEM shipments to mobile PC customers, in millions. (Source: DisplaySearch)

What will 100M iPads do to the tablet supply chain?

Speaking of Apple, panel makers including Samsung, LG Display, Sharp, and Innolux are expected to ship 70M iPad panels (9.7-in.) in 2012; about a third of them (23M) for iPad 2 XGA panels and the rest (47M) the new iPad QXGA panels that use both a-Si and oxide TFT technologies. Strong sales of the legacy iPad model continue, though, so Apple and its panel makers are having to adjust their panel production plans.

Die-hard techies love their favorite devices, none more so than Apple fans. The iPad mini, which was recently voted one of the hottest consumer products of 2012 in Japan, immediately faced supply shortages for its 7.85-in. XGA display supplied by AUO and LG Display. Apple had originally planned to sell 6M units in 2012; only 1.6M panels shipped in 3Q12, but the company wants panel makers to ship another 12M to meet demand.

This is even harder than it sounds. The iPad panels are known to be complex and difficult to make, notes DisplaySearch’s David Hsieh. Not only must they have high resolution and low-power consumption, but their wide viewing angle and high color saturation require additional photomask steps. "Standard a-Si TFT backplanes require 4 or 5 photomask steps, but the iPad and iPad mini panels require 6 to 7," notes Hsieh. "And for panel makers with limited experience in IPS [in-plane switching] or FFS production, as many as 8 mask steps may be used. Increased mask steps means longer production times and lower yield rates."

If Apple’s expectations for a substantially bigger 2013 come true, it might have to rethink its supply chain even further. Answering the strong demand for the iPad mini, the company is targeting 100M iPad shipments in 2013 — half of those for the mini, 40M for the new iPad, and 10M of the iPad 2 model. (DisplaySearch projects over 170M total tablet PC shipments in 2013, which would give Apple continued domination at 60% share.) But there’s a downside, notes Hsieh: "If the iPad mini volume is anything near 50 million units, Apple will need to find other panel suppliers in addition to AUO and LG Display, just as it always has three suppliers for the iPad panels," he writes. Likely candidates include Century (China), Innolux (Taiwan), and Panasonic LCD (Japan), all of whom are experienced in IPS technologies. Apple must also manage its iPad panel supplies in case it ends up parting ways with longtime partner/competitor Samsung.

In an IC fab, cycle time is the time interval between when a lot is started and when it is completed. The benefits of shorter cycle time during volume production are well known: reduced capital costs associated with having less work in progress (WIP); reduced number of finished goods required as safety stock; reduced number of wafers affected by engineering change notices (ECNs); reduced inventory costs in case of a drop in demand; more flexibility to accept orders, including short turnaround orders; and shorter response time to customer demands. Additionally, during development and ramp, shorter cycle times accelerate end-of-line learning and can result in faster time to market for the first lots out the door.

Given all the benefits of reducing cycle time, it’s useful to consider how wafer defect inspection contributes to the situation. To begin with, the majority of lots do not accrue any cycle time associated with the inspection, since usually less than 25 percent of lots go through any given inspection point. For those that are inspected, cycle time is accrued by sending a lot over to the inspection tool, waiting until it’s available, inspecting the lot and then dispositioning the wafers. On the other hand, defect inspection can decrease variability in the lot arrival rate—thereby reducing cycle time.

Three of the most important factors used in calculating fab cycle time are variability, availability, and utilization. Of these, variability is by far the most important. If lots arrive at process tools at a constant rate, exactly equal to the processing time, then no lot will ever have to wait and the queue time will be identically zero. Other sources of variability affect cycle time, such as maintenance schedules and variability in processing time, but variability in the lot arrival rate tends to have the biggest impact on cycle time.

In the real world lots don’t arrive at a constant rate and one of the biggest sources of variability in the lot arrival rate is the dreaded WIP bubble—a huge bulge in inventory that moves slowly through the line like an over-fed snake. In the middle of a WIP bubble every lot just sits there, accruing cycle time, waiting for the next process tool to become available. Then it moves to the next process step where the same thing happens again until eventually the bubble dissipates. Sometimes WIP bubbles are a result of the natural ebb and flow of material as it moves through the line, but often they are the result of a temporary restriction in capacity at a particular process step (e.g., a long “tool down”).

When a defect excursion is discovered at a given inspection step, a fab may put down every process tool that the offending lot encountered, from the last inspection point where the defect count was known to be in control, to the current inspection step.  Each down process tool is then re-qualified until, through a process of elimination, the offending process tool is identified.

If the inspection points are close together, then there will be relatively few process tools put down and the WIP bubble will be small.  However, if the inspection points are far apart, not only will more tools be down, but each tool will be down for a longer period of time because it will take longer to find the problem.  The resulting WIP bubble can persist for weeks, as it often acts like a wave that reverberates back and forth through the line creating abnormally high cycle times for an extended period of time. 

Consider the two situations depicted in Figure 1 (below). The chart on the top represents a fab where the cycle time is relatively constant. In this case, increasing the number of wafer inspection steps in the process flow probably won’t help.  However, in the second situation (bottom), the cycle time is highly variable. Often this type of pattern is indicative of WIP bubbles.  Having more wafer inspection steps in the process flow both reduces the number of lots at risk, and may also help reduce the cycle time by smoothing out the lot arrival rate.

 

Because of its rich benefits, reducing cycle time is nearly always a value-added activity. However, reducing cycle time by eliminating inspection steps may be a short-sighted approach for three important reasons. First, only a small percentage of lots actually go through inspection points, so the cycle time improvement may be minimal. Second, the potential yield loss that results from having fewer inspection points typically has a much greater financial impact than that realized by shorter cycle time. Third, reducing the number of inspection points often increases the number and size of WIP bubbles. 

For further discussions on this topic, please explore the references listed at the end of the article, or contact the first author.

Doug Sutherland, Ph.D., is a principal scientist and Rebecca Howland, Ph.D., is a senior director in the corporate group at KLA-Tencor.

Check out other Process Watch articles: “The Dangerous Disappearing Defect,” “Skewing the Defect Pareto,” “Bigger and Better Wafers,” “Taming the Overlay Beast,” “A Clean, Well-Lighted Reticle,” “Breaking Parametric Correlation,” “Cycle Time’s Paradoxical Relationship to Yield,” and “The Gleam of Well-Polished Sapphire.”

References

1.       David W. Price and Doug Sutherland, “The Impact of Wafer Inspection on Fab Cycle Time,” Future Technology and Challenges Forum, SEMICON West, 2007.

2.       Peter Gaboury, “Equipment Process Time Variability: Cycle Time Impacts,” Future Fab International. Volume 11 (6/29/2001).  

3.       Fab-Time, Inc.  “Cycle Time Management for Wafer Fabs:  Technical Library and Tutorial.”

4.       W.J. Hopp and M.L. Spearman, “Factory Physics,” McGraw-Hill, 2001, p 325.

A new breakthrough in contact lens displays can turn your eyes in to dollar signs, but they aren’t an alternative to Google glasses — at least not yet. The Centre of Microsystems Technology (CMST), imec’s associated laboratory at Ghent University (Belgium), has developed an innovative spherical curved LCD display, which can be embedded in contact lenses. The first step toward fully pixelated contact lens displays, this achievement has potential wide-spread applications in medical and cosmetic domains.

Unlike LED-based contact lens displays, which are limited to a few small pixels, imec’s innovative LCD-based technology permits the use of the entire display surface. By adapting the patterning process of the conductive layer, this technology enables applications with a broad range of pixel number and sizes, such as a one pixel, fully covered contact lens acting as adaptable sunglasses, or a highly pixelated contact lens display.

The first prototype presented today contains a patterned dollar sign, depicting the many cartoons that feature people or figures with dollars in their eyes. It can only display rudimentary patterns, similar to an electronic pocket calculator. In the future, the researchers envision fully autonomous electronic contact lenses embedded with this display. These next-generation solutions could be used for medical purposes, for example to control the light transmission toward the retina in case of a damaged iris, or for cosmetic purposes such as an iris with a tunable color. In the future, the display could also function as a head-up display, superimposing an image onto the user’s normal view. However, there are still hurdles to overcome for broader consumer and civilian implementation.

“Normally, flexible displays using liquid crystal cells are not designed to be formed into a new shape, especially not a spherical one. Thus, the main challenge was to create a very thin, spherically curved substrate with active layers that could withstand the extreme molding processes,” said Jelle De Smet, the main researcher on the project. “Moreover, since we had to use very thin polymer films, their influence on the smoothness of the display had to be studied in detail. By using new kinds of conductive polymers and integrating them into a smooth spherical cell, we were able to fabricate a new LCD-based contact lens display.”

Prof. Herbert De Smet, who is supervising CMST’s display group further comments: “Now that we have established the basic technology, we can start working towards real applications, possibly available in only a few years time.

The prime application for thin-film-transistors are backplanes for active-matrix displays, including in particular flexible displays. They are well-suited for integration with temperature or chemical sensors and more. Hoi-Jun Yoo of KAIST in South Korea presents.

Technology directions in the field of large-area and low-temperature electronics focuses on lowering the cost-per-unit- area, instead of increasing the number of functions-per-unit-area that is accomplished in crystalline Si technology, according to the well-known Moore’s law. Subcommittee chair Hoi-Jun Yoo will present on the trends of these large-area flexible electronics. Read more.

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EV Group has completed its expanded cleanroom IV facility at its corporate headquarters in Austria, which doubled its cleanroom space for process development and pilot production services.

As part of the company’s long-term growth strategy to address high-volume tool orders and speed time to market, EV Group, a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment, also increased the size of its application labs, added new R&D facilities for internal tool development and testing, and opened a new customer and employee training center.

The customer and employee training center provides several new rooms for instructional training courses, as well as a large number of manual and automated EVG tools for training.

While manufacturing and product development are centralized at EV Group’s corporate headquarters, technology and process development teams in Austria work closely with the company’s subsidiaries in Tempe, AZ; Albany, NY; Yokohama and Fukuoka, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; and Chung-Li, Taiwan, where additional, state-of-the-art application labs and cleanroom facilities are available.

Earlier this year, the addition of an ultra-modern manufacturing facility that doubled the production floor space marked the completion of the first phase of EVG’s long term expansion plans. Already positively contributing to EVG’s growth from the beginning of 2012, the company increased its order intake in FY12 (ended September 30) by 5 percent over fiscal 2011, and increased its revenue by 20 percent within the same period.