Category Archives: Displays

Worldwide LED component market grows 9%

Strategies Unlimited has issued new figures since the first edition of this article. Solid State Technology now brings you updated figures and additional information on the worldwide LED market.

LED component revenue for lighting applications reached $3.11 billion in 2012, narrowly dethroning the large area display backlight segment at $3.06 billion, according to Strategies Unlimited, a market research firm covering the LED industry.  The worldwide market for LED components was $13.7 billion and is expected to grow to $15 billion in 2017, for a CAGR of 1.8%.

The total illumination market for 2012 is estimated at $14.52 billion. LED lighting includes LED replacement lamps and luminaires is estimated at $11.72 billion—an increase of 26% between 2011 and 2012—and it is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 12% over 2012-2017.

The 2012 estimate for revenues for the illumination market, not addressed by the LED replacement lamps and luminaires is $2.75 billion revenue.  These other applications include: decorative/festive/Christmas light strings; tube lights that go into many untraceable applications including signs; flexible tape and strips of LEDs sold in applications ranging from step lighting to lighting stairs to DIY cove lighting; and all other miscellaneous.

Commercial applications are the largest segment and grew the fastest—72%—in the LED lighting market followed by replacement lamps. Japanese market was the primary driver for the 22% growth in replacement lamp revenues from 2011 to 2012. The slower growing segments such as emergency and industrial lighting depend on the overall economic activity; entertainment lighting was a victim of slow down in European financial crisis, after the frenzy for the Olympics.

LEDs used in large display (TV and monitors) backlights also reached a new record at $3.06 billion in 2012. This is chiefly due to the success in penetrating the CCFL stronghold of the 32-inch TV. Low cost direct technology, also known as “chubby TV” technology because the TVs are thicker than edge-lit ones and narrows the price gap between CCFL and LED backlit TV to an insignificant level.  Both Samsung and LG have announced they will stop making CCFL TVs.

Chubby TVs will spread from 32 inches in both directions in size. It is expected to reach TVs 42 to 50 inches size in 2013-2014.  With drastic reduction in number of LEDs used and rapid price erosion, the large display market for LEDs is expected to decline to $1.7 billion in 2017.

The total market for LEDs in the automotive segment was $1.4 billion in 2012 and is projected to grow to $2.1 billion in 2017. The number of cars with LED headlights nearly doubled in 2012. Revenue for 2012 was $97 million and the five-year CAGR is projected to be 36%.

The number of cars with LED headlights nearly doubled in 2012. Revenue for 2012 was $97 million and the five-year CAGR is projected to be 36%.  Revenue derived from daytime running lights (DRL) grew 31% to $200 million in 2012.  DRL growth is expected to slow down as the penetration rate is forecast to reach 45% in 2017.  The total market for LEDs in the automotive segment was $1.4 billion in 2012, and is projected to grow to $2.1 billion in 2017.

While LED revenue from tablets grew 54% to $578 million, the overall mobile segment dropped 3%.  The drop in notebook backlight demand, the OLED success in smart phone display, and the general demand decline for other small and medium display will take the segment down to $958 million in 2017, for a 5 year CAGR of -7%.

Use of LEDs in signage and channel letters grew 7% to $1.7 billion in 2012.  Full-color signs contributed more than 80% of the revenue. The most popular pixel densities for indoor displays are expected to be 3mm and 4mm in 2013, meaning more LEDs will be needed.  The signage segment is expected to grow to $2.4 billion in 2017, for a CAGR of 7%. 

Breakdown of worldwide LED market by countryOn the supply side, 11 companies accounted for more than 72% of the LED market. Strategies Unlimited arrived at these figures after analyzing market demand as well as the supply-side activity of more than 54 LED component suppliers. The rank order of the top 11 suppliers in the LED market for 2012, by revenue of packaged LED components, is:

1. Nichia     

2. Samsung LED         

3. Osram Opto Semiconductors        

4. LG Innotek       

5. Seoul Semiconductor*       

6. Philips Lumileds*        

7. Cree         

8. TG      

9. Sharp       

10. Everlight*     

11. Lumens*

(*Companies have the same ranking when the difference in revenue is within the margin of error. Revenue includes sales of packaged LEDs of 30 lm/W or more.)

Samsung LED was absorbed into Samsung Electronics in 2012. By going vertical and successfully attacking the low cost direct TV market, LED sales soared at Samsung and at its chief supplier, Lumens. TG’s success in the tablet backlight market and the Japanese lighting market brought high growth to the company. Cree and Philips Lumileds rode the rise of LED lighting and achieved record revenues.

Chinese packaging companies grew from 6% of worldwide sales to 8%. Major consolidation is expected in China as the pricing war is forcing out many players. Taiwanese market share dropped from 19% to 15% as there is an increase of OEM packaging activities.  Only final sale is counted in this study.

The LED packaging industry is expected to grow modestly at a CAGR of 1.8% in the next five years. 2013 should see less severe price drops as excess capacity is slowly absorbed by the rise of lighting applications.  Consolidation—both vertical and horizontal—can help improve margins. 

Breakdown of worldwide LED market by technology

 

Demand for ubiquitous mobile functionality to achieve enhanced productivity, a better social-networking experience, and improved multimedia quality, continues to drive innovation in technologies that will deliver to these objectives in an energy and cost-efficient manner. While the performance of embedded processors has increased to meet the rising demands of general-purpose computations, dedicated multimedia accelerators provide dramatic improvements in performance and energy efficiency of specific applications. Energy harvesting is another area of growing importance, leading to technologies that leverage non-volatile logic-based SoC’s for applications that do not have a constant power source or handheld devices with very limited battery capacity.

Technology scaling continues to be exploited to deliver designs capable of operating at lower voltages, resulting in reduced energy per operation, as well as reducing the area required to implement specific functions. Processors unveiled at ISSCC 2013 are built on a variety of technology nodes, with best-in-class results accomplished along the axes of integration, performance/watt and functional integration, as well as a few industry-first implementations. These are demonstrated in various process nodes ranging from 0.13μm down to 28nm bulk, and SOI CMOS technologies.

Emerging medical applications require a significant reduction in the standby power over state-of-the-art commercial processors. This drives the exploration of new leakage-reduction techniques in both logic and on-chip memories, targeting orders of magnitude reduction in leakage currents. Fast wake-up time requirements drive the need for saving and restoring the processor state.

In the late 1990s, a GSM phone contained a simple RISC processor running at 26MHz, supporting a primitive user interface. After a steady increase in clock frequency to roughly 300 MHz in the early 2000s, there has been sudden spurt towards 1 GHz and beyond. Moreover, following trends in laptops and desktops, processor architectures have become much more advanced, and recent smart phones incorporate dual and even quad-core processors, running up to 2GHz frequencies. Battery capacity, mostly driven by the required form factor, as well as thermal limits imply a power budget of roughly 3W for a smartphone. From this budget, also the power amplifier (for cellular communication) and the displays have to be powered. The available power budget for everything digital is in the range of 2W (peak) to 1W (sustained). As a result, energy efficiency has become the main challenge in designing application processors, graphics processors, media processors (video, image, audio), and modems (cellular, WLAN, GPS, Bluetooth). For video and image processing, the trend has been towards dedicated, optimized hardware solutions. Some new areas where dedicated processors are particularly needed include gesture-based user interfaces, and computational imaging, to name a few. For all digital circuits, the limited power budget leads to more fine-grained clock gating, various forms of (adaptive) voltage-frequency scaling, a variety of body-bias schemes, and elaborate power management strategies.

Interestingly, cellular links, wireless LAN, as well as short links consistently show a 10× increase every five years, with no sign of abating. With essentially constant power and thermal budgets, energy efficiency has become a central theme in designing the digital circuits for the involved signal processing. Historically, CMOS feature sizes halve every five years. For a brief period in the 1990s, CMOS scaling (a.k.a. Dennard scaling) provided a 23 (α-3) increase in energy efficiency per five years, almost matching the required 10×. During the past decade; however, CMOS scaling offers a roughly 3× improvement in energy efficiency every five years. The resulting ever-widening gap has led to alternative approaches to improve energy efficiency, namely, new standards, smarter algorithms, more efficient digital signal processors, highly-optimized accelerators, smarter hardware-software partitioning, as well as the power management techniques mentioned above.

This and other related topics will be discussed at length at ISSCC 2013, the foremost global forum for new developments in the integrated-circuit industry. ISSCC, the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, will be held on February 17-21, 2013, at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel.

Ten product categories, led by tablet MPUs and cellphone application MPUs, are forecast to exceed the 6% growth rate forecast for the total IC market this year, according to IC Insights’ 2013 McClean Report.  This report identifies and segments the total IC market into 34 major IC product categories.  Five categories are forecast to enjoy double-digit growth.  The number of categories with positive growth is expected to more than double to 22 in 2013 from 10 in 2012.

Consumer-driven mobile media devices, particularly smartphones and tablet computers, are forecast to keep the tablet MPU (50%) and cellphone application MPU (28%) segments at the top of the growth list for the third consecutive year.  Other IC categories that support mobile systems—including NAND flash (12%) and special-purpose logic devices—are expected to enjoy better-than-industry-average growth in 2013, as well.

Due to increasing demand for higher levels of precision in embedded-processing systems and the growth in connectivity using the Internet, the market for 32-bit MCUs is also forecast to outpace total IC market growth in 2013.  Embedded applications in medical/health systems and smartcards have helped boost the 32-bit MCU market.  In the automotive world, demand for 32-bit MCUs is being driven by “intelligent” car systems such as driver information systems and semi-autonomous driving features such as self-parking, advanced cruise controls, and collision-avoidance systems.  In the next few years, complex 32-bit MCUs are expected to account for over 25% of the processing power in vehicles.

After back-to-back years of steep declines in 2011 and 2012, the DRAM market is forecast to increase 9% in 2013, three points more than the total IC market.  DRAM unit growth is expected to increase only 2%, but the overall average selling price is forecast to jump 7% this year.  In five of the past six years (2007-2012) the DRAM market declined, which took its toll on weaker suppliers.  Fewer suppliers in the marketplace mean fewer competitors trying to undercut each other’s prices in order to gain marketshare and enhances the likelihood of a more stable pricing environment in the coming year.

Interestingly, in a world that is increasingly wireless, two IC categories of “wired” telecom ICs are forecast to grow faster than the total IC market.  Wired telecom—special purpose logic/MPR and wired telecom—application-specific analog are forecast to grow by 13% and 11%, respectively.

Telecom companies and network operators have been upgrading their long-haul and metropolitan-wide communications systems, which require many high-speed transmission ICs and other circuits. New 100Gb/s technology has been ready for deployment since 2009 and is being deployed now. Next-generation transmission technology and ICs for 1 trillion bits per second ("Terabit") networks are in development.

Telecom and network operators say data traffic is increasing more than 50% per year due to growing use of the Internet and video transmissions.  All wireless traffic eventually goes through high-speed cable transmission "backbone" networks—communications are routed over long distance via optical cable before getting to the cellular network on the other end.  All the mobile Internet, data, and video traffic has to go through a cable network and that is driving up the market for wired telecom—special-purpose logic/MPR and wired telecom—application-specific analog.  To a lesser degree, the wired telecom segments are growing on account of developing country markets where the use of landline phones is increasing.

Additional details on IC product markets are included in the 2013 edition of IC Insights’ flagship report, The McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry, which features more than 400 tables and graphs in the main report.

Imagers

Since 2010, there has been growth beyond expectations in the adoption of mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, which has called for larger volumes of CMOS image sensor chips to be produced. The resolution and miniaturization races are ongoing, and performance metrics are also becoming more stringent. In addition to the conventional pixel shrinkage, a “more than Moore” trend is increasingly evident. Resolutions of over 20 Mpixels are commercially available for mobile devices employing enhanced small-size pixels. Thanks to the innovative readout and ADC architectures embedded at the column and chip levels, data rates approaching 50Gb/s and a noise floor below single electron have been demonstrated. In addition to the conventional applications, ultra-low-power vision sensors, 3D, high-speed, and multispectral imaging are the front-running emerging technologies.

Back-side Illumination (BSI) is now the mainstream technology for high-volume, high-performance mobile applications, 1.12μm BSI pixels are available, and the industry is potentially moving towards 0.9μm pixel pitch and below. Additional innovative technologies outside of the traditional scaling include advanced 3D stacking of a specialized image sensor layer on top of deep-submicron digital CMOS (65nm 1P7M) using through silicon vias (TSVs) and micro-bumps. The importance of digital-signal-processing technology in cameras continues to grow in order to mitigate sensor imperfections and noise, and to compensate for optical limitations. The level of sensor computation is increasing to thousands of operations-per pixel, requiring high-performance and low-power digital-signal-processing solutions. In parallel with these efforts is a trend throughout the image sensor industry toward higher levels of integration to reduce system costs.

Ultra-low-power vision sensors are being reported in which more programmability and computation is performed at the pixel level in order to extract scene information such as object features and motion.

Lightfield/plenoptic commercial cameras, which have been available since 2010, are now gaining popularity and are being marketed for 3D imaging and/or all-in-focus 2D imaging. On-chip stereoscopic vision has been demonstrated through digital micro lenses (DML), paving the way to next-generation passive 3D imaging for mobile and entertainment applications, e.g. through gesture control user interfaces.

Significant R&D effort is being spent on active 3D imaging time-of-flight (TOF) applications to support requirements from autonomous driving, gaming, and industrial applications, addressing open challenges like background light immunity, higher spatial resolution, and longer distance range. Deep-submicron CMOS single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) have been developed by several groups using different technology nodes. They are now capable of meeting the requirements for high resolution, high timing accuracy by employing highly parallel time-to-digital-converters (TDCs) and small pixel pitch with better fill factor.

Ultra-high-speed image sensors for scientific imaging applications with up to 20Mfps acquisition speed have been demonstrated.

Multispectral imaging is gaining a lot of interest from the image sensor community: several research groups have demonstrated fully CMOS room-temperature THz image sensors, and a hybrid sensor capable of simultaneous visible, IR, and THz detection has been reported.

The share of CCDs continues to shrink in machine vision, compact DSC and security applications. Only for high-end digital cameras for astronomy and medical imaging do CCDs still maintain a significant market share.

Sensors & MEMS

A 4×4 array of sensing cells, developed by Dr. Peng Peng of Seagate Technology, from Flexible Microtactile Sensor for Normal and Shear Elasticity (IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics)

MEMS inertial sensors are finding widespread use in consumer applications to provide enhanced user interfaces, localization, and image stabilization. Accelerometers and gyroscopes are being combined with 3D magnetic-field sensors to form nine-degree-of-freedom devices, and pressure sensors will eventually add a 10th degree. The power consumption of such devices is becoming sufficiently low for the sensor to be on all the time, enhancing indoor navigation. There have been further advances in heterogeneous integration of MEMS with interface circuits in supporting increased performance, larger sensor arrays, reduced noise sensitivity, reduced size, and lower costs.

To address the stringent requirements of automotive, industrial, mobile, and scientific application, MEMS inertial sensors, pressure sensors and microphones are becoming more robust against electromagnetic interference (EMI), packaging parasitics, process voltage temperature (PVT) variations, humidity, and vibration.

Sensor interfaces achieve increasingly high resolution and dynamic range while maintaining or improving power or energy efficiency. This is achieved through techniques such as zooming, non-uniform quantization, and compensation for baseline values.

New calibration approaches, such as voltage calibration, are being adopted for BJT-based temperature sensors to reduce cost. In addition to thermal management applications (prevention of overheating in microprocessors and SoCs), temperature sensors are also increasingly co-integrated with other sensors (e.g. humidity, pressure, and current sensors) and MEMS resonators for cross-sensitivity compensation. Alternative temperature-sensing concepts find their way into applications with specific requirements not easily addressed by BJTs: thermal diffusivity-based sensing for high-temperature applications; thermistor-based and Q-based concepts for in-situ temperature sensing of MEMS devices and for ultra-low voltage operation.

MEMS oscillators continue to improve; phase noise is now low enough for demanding RF applications, 12kHz-to-20MHz integrated jitter is now below 0.5ps, and frequency accuracy is now better than 0.5ppm. Consumer applications are adopting new low-power and low-cost oscillators.

Biomedical

There have been continuous achievements in the area of ICs for neural and biopotential interfacing technologies. Spatial resolution of neural monitoring devices is being reduced utilizing the benefits of CMOS technology. IC providers are increasing their component offerings towards miniaturization of portable medical devices.

Telemedicine and remote-monitoring applications are expanding with support from IC manufacturing companies. The applications of such systems are not limited to services targeted for elderly or chronically ill patients; for example there are several technologies developed to enhance the way clinical trials are conducted by monitoring patient adherence and by improving data collection. Low power WiFi, and Bluetooth-low-energy is emerging as a standard wireless connection between portable communication services and wearable technology.

Smart biomolecular sensing is another major trend that marries solid-state and biochemical worlds together with the ultimate goal of enabling a more predictive and preventative medicine. With the help of the accuracy and parallelism enabled by CMOS technology, time, cost, and error rate of DNA sequencing may be significantly improved. Direct electronic readout may relax the need for complex biochemical assays. Similar trends are becoming increasingly evident in the space of proteomics and sample preparation.

Even for medical imaging, there is a trend from hospital imaging toward point-of-care and portable devices. A key example is in the space of portable high-resolution ultrasounds in which larger scientific imaging setups are being integrated onto the sensor by process technology (e.g. integrated spectral filters, CMUT). Another example is in the space of molecular imaging. The advent of silicon photomultipliers (SiPM) providing a solid-state alternative to PMTs enable the realization of PET scanners compatible with MRI, opening the way to new frontiers in the field of cancer diagnostics. More recently, SiPMs realized within deep-submicron CMOS technologies have allowed the integration at pixel- and chip-level of extra features, e.g. multiple timestamp extraction, allowing in perspective a dramatic reduction of the system cost.

Displays

The desire to put much higher-resolution and higher-definition displays into mobile applications is one of the display technology trends, and it is now opening a Full HD smartphone era.  440ppi high-definition displays are expected, even for 5-inch display sizes. Low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) technology seems to have more merits over a-Si TFT technology. But a-Si TFT and oxide TFT technologies supported by compensating driver systems are being prepared to compete with it. Very-large-size LCD TVs over 84 inches, and UD (3840×2160) resolution are now the leading entertainment systems. 55-inch AMOLED TVs with Full HD resolution are also opening new opportunities in consumer applications.

As touch-screen displays for mobile devices become increasingly thin, capacitive touch sensors move closer to the display. The resulting in-cell touch displays come with reduced signal levels due to increased parasitics, and increased interference from the display and switched-mode chargers. Noise immunity is improved by adopting noise filtering and new signal modulation approaches.

This and other related topics will be discussed at length at ISSCC 2013, the foremost global forum for new developments in the integrated-circuit industry. ISSCC, the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, will be held on February 17-21, 2013, at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel.

large area flexible displaysTechnology 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.

A clear breakthrough in research for large area electronics in the last decade has been the development of thin-filmtransistor, or TFT processes with an extremely low temperature budget of (<150°C) enabling manufacturing of flexible and inexpensive substrates like plastic films and paper.

The materials used for these developments have for a long time been carbon-based organic molecules like pentacene with properties of p-type semiconductors. More recently, air-stable organic n-type semiconductors and amorphous metal oxides, which are also n-type semiconductors, have emerged. The most popular metal oxide semiconductor is amorphous Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide, or IGZO, but variants exist, such as Zinc Oxide, Zinc Tin Oxide, and so on. The mobility of n- and p-type organic semiconductors has reached values exceeding 10 cm2Vs, which is already at par or exceeding the performance of amorphous silicon. Amorphous metal oxide transistors have typical charge carrier mobility of 10 to 20 cm2/Vs. Operational stability of all semiconductor materials has greatly improved, and should be sufficient to enable commercial applications, especially in combination with large-area compatible barrier layers to seal the transistor stack.

In the state-of-the-art p-type only, n-type only and complementary technologies are available. For the latter, all-organic implementations have been shown, but also hybrid solutions, featuring the integration of p-type organic with n-type oxide TFTs. Most TFTs are still manufactured with technologies from display-lines, using subtractive methods based on lithography. However, there is a clear emphasis on the development of technologies that could provide higher production throughput, based on different technologies borrowed from the graphic printing world like screen and inkjet printing. The feature sizes and spread of characteristics of printed TFT technologies are still larger than those made by lithography, but there is clear progress in the field.

The prime application for these TFT families are backplanes for active-matrix displays, including in particular flexible displays. Organic TFTs are well-suited for electronic paper-type displays, whereas oxide TFTs are targeting OLED displays. Furthermore, these thin-film transistors on foil are well-suited for integration with temperature or chemical sensors, pressure-sensitive foils, photodiode arrays, antennas, sheets capable of distributing RF power to appliances, energy scavenging devices, and so on, which will lead to hybrid integrated systems on foil. Early demonstrations include smart labels, smart shop shelves, smart medical patches, etc. They are enabled by a continuous progress in the complexity of analog TFT circuits targeting the interface with sensors and actuators, to modulate, amplify and convert analog signals as well as progress in digital TFT circuits and non-volatile memory to process and store information.

In line with this trend, ISSCC 2013 features three papers representing the latest state-of-the-art of organic thin-film transistor circuits. A front-end amplifier array for EMG measurement is demonstrated for the first time with organic electronics in paper 6.4. Transistor mismatch and power consumption of the amplifier are reduced by 92% and 56%, respectively, by selecting and connecting the transistors trough a post-inkjet printing. Papers 6.5 and 6.6 present advances in analog-to-digital converters for sensing applications. Papers 6.5 demonstrates the first ADC that integrates on the same chips resistors and printed n and p-type transistors. The ADC achieves an SNDR of 19.6dB, SNR of 25.7dB and BW of 2Hz. In Papers 6.6, an ADC made only with p-type transistors is presented that has the highest linearity without calibration and that is 14 times smaller than previous works using the same technology.

This and other related topics will be discussed at length at ISSCC 2013, the foremost global forum for new developments in the integrated-circuit industry. ISSCC, the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, will be held on February 17-21, 2013, at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel.

Agilent Technologies Inc. announced yesterday the intent to donate $90 million in software to Georgia Institute of Technology, the largest in-kind software donation ever in its longstanding relationship with the university.

“Georgia Tech is among the best research universities in the world, offering the largest, most diverse electrical and computer engineering program in the United States and regularly turning out the largest number of engineers in America,” said Steve McLaughlin, chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Maintaining that position requires the best teachers and facilities and, increasingly, key partnerships with companies like Agilent. Thanks to Agilent’s support, our students now have access to the industry’s leading software and hardware tools.”

Last year, Georgia Tech dedicated a new laboratory to Agilent after the company made a substantial donation to the university’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

Agilent’s latest in-kind donation is valued at approximately $90 million over three years and will comprise Agilent EDA software, support and training. The donation is being given as part of the Agilent EEsof EDA University Alliance program. It includes a tailored, three-year custom license program that provides member companies of ECE’s Georgia Electronic Design Center with access to Agilent’s EEsof EDA solutions.

“This is one of the largest academic donations of Agilent EEsof products to a single institution and the largest software gift Georgia Tech has ever received,” said Todd Cutler, general manager with Agilent EEsof EDA. “We realize that universities and start-up incubator programs play a crucial role in pushing the limits of EDA tools; feedback from our partnership with Georgia Tech helps us target our development investments to make sure our products support leading-edge technology development.”

Academic uses of Agilent EDA software will focus on Agilent EEsof’s Advanced Design System and SystemVue solutions. ADS is the world’s leading electronic design automation software for RF, microwave and high-speed digital applications, pioneering innovative and commercially successful technologies such as X-parameters and 3-D electromagnetic simulators. SystemVue is Agilent’s premier platform for designing communications systems. It enables system architects and algorithm developers to innovate the physical layer of wireless and aerospace/defense communications systems and provides unique value to RF, DSP, and FPGA/ASIC implementers.

A new report from IHS Displaybank examined a total of 483 patents on roll-to-roll processing technologies, focusing on 32 that were flexible, OLED-related. 43 flexible OLED-related roll-to-roll application technologies and 23 roll-to-roll patents by SiPix were also selected for an analysis. 

A flexible display is considered as the next-generation display that is bendable and rollable without damage, by using a paper-thin and flexible substrate. The flexible display market is projected to lead the market growth by creating a new display market as well as by replacing the current display market. In addition, when producing flexible displays, if a large-area and low-cost technology based on the roll -to-roll process is realized, new demands with such as indoor/outdoor advertising and various decorative purposes are expected to be created.

The roll-to-roll process is a foundation to mass produce flexible electronics applications at low cost. It is a greatly demanded technology in the related-product manufacturing industry. The technology at the present level allows high speed printing, but the ink viscosity and the resolution vary depending on the printing method, and the equipment research on the device manufacturing process has not yet conducted enough.

The report contains the application trend and in-depth analysis of key patents on the roll-to-roll processing technology.

Looking at the application trend of 483 patents on roll-to-roll processing technology, the number of applications has continuously increased since mid 2000s, and many were applied in the U.S. Major applicants include 3M Innovative Properties, SiPix Imaging, Fuji Film, and General Electric. Amid vigorous developments of roll-to-roll processing technologies, competition among companies in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea gets increasingly fierce.

Roll-to-roll Processing Technology Patent Application Trends by Year/Country

 

Source: Displaybank, “Key Patent Analysis—Flexible Roll-to-roll Processing Technology”

Of a total of 483 roll-to-roll processing technology patents, 23 flexible OLED-related U.S. published/issued patents and 9 international patents were extracted as key patents. In-depth analyses were conducted on the 32 key patents after divided into the roll-to-roll manufacturing processing technology and apparatus technology. The key patent analysis includes key patent status, technology development map, and abstract.

At SPIE Photonics West 2013, imec will present a prototype hyperspectral imager for snapshot and video acquisition. Being fast, compact and cost-efficient, the CMOS-based imaging systems with integrated hyperspectral filters are suited for multiple industrial vision applications. Imec is currently sampling the line scan version of its hyperspectral imaging solution, offering a ready-to-use evaluation kit to the industry to line scan and analyze specific sample material.

Imec’s prototype hyperspectral imager for snapshot and video captures an entire multispectral image at one discrete point in time. The imager is achieved by applying a hyperspectral filter in a novel tiled lay-out on a commercially available CMOS-based image sensor (CMOSIS CMV2000, 2 megapixel, max 340fps). The imager and off-the-shelf fore-optics simultaneously duplicates the scene onto each filter tile, acquiring multispectral image cubes of 256×256 pixels over 32 bands in the spectral range of 600-1000nm at up to 340 cubes per second—compliant to normal machine vision illumination levels. Due to its simple cube assembly process, the camera is able to acquire real-time hyperspectral video.

Imec’s line scan solution monolithically integrates hyperspectral filters on a CMOSIS CMV4000 imager (4 megapixel, max 180fps). It scans 100 spectral bands in the 600-1000nm wavelength range. The filter bandwidth (Full Width Half Max) is about 10nm across the spectral range, with a transmission efficiency of ~85%. The speed of the system corresponds to an equivalent speed of 2,000 lines per second, significantly exceeding current state-of-the-art hyperspectral sensors.

Imec is the first to sample CMOS integrated hyperspectral imaging sensors, giving the industry access to a compelling innovative technology. Evaluation kits of imec’s line scan solution are available now. They are fast and easy to set-up, enabling hyperspectral scanning and analysis of sample material, and delivering relevant test data within a few days after installation. The kits include all required components, from imager to host PC and software, and can be easily rebuilt into different configurations. During the course of 2013, imec expects to also launch evaluation systems compatible with its novel hyperspectral sensor for hyperspectral snapshot and video acquisition.

The touch panel market is growing rapidly due to the increasing sale of smartphones and tablet PCs. The touch panel market size in 2012 was 1.3 billion units, a 39.4% growth over 2011. The market is projected to grow 34% in 2013, growing to more than 1.8 billion units, according to a new research report from Displaybank.

Source: Displaybank, "Touch Panel Market Forecast and Cost/Issue/Industry Analysis for 2013"

Smartphone and tablet PCs, major applications that use touch panels, are expected to continue to grow at a high rate. In addition, most IT devices that use display panels have either switched to or will start using the touch panels soon. Therefore the touch panel market will show a double digit growth annually until 2016, by unit. The market size is expected to reach more than 2.75 billion units by 2016.

With the explosion in the sale of smartphones and tablet PCs during the past few years, our lives have changed dramatically. They are now common place in our lives, and have a huge influence in the IT industry in general. With the introduction of Windows 8 OS in October 2012, upsizing of touch panels has begun. The impact of this event on the immediate growth of the touch panel market and the long-term effect is so immense that it cannot be estimated at the moment.

The financial crisis that started in 2008 left much of the IT industry hobbling worldwide. But only the touch panel market is enjoying a boom. Many new players are pouring into the industry, and those on the sidelines are waiting for the opportune moment to enter. As more players enter the competitive landscape, touch panel prices are falling rapidly. In addition, to gain competitiveness and to differentiate itself in the market has led players to develop and improve structure, technique and process, and seek out new materials.

The introduction of Windows 8 is leading the increase in touch capable Notebook and AIO PCs. It is still too early for the touch interface to completely displace keyboard and mouse, but the touch functionality does add convenience to some operations. We are sure to see an increase in specialized apps that capitalize on such functions. Therefore, touch functions will complement traditional input methods. As the technology is still in early implementation stages, it is used only in select high-end Ultrabooks. But it’s only a matter of time before touch functions make its way to mid-end products.

Forecasting the future of touch panel industry is not only difficult, but also outright confusing in the current landscape due to the rapid expansion; the increase in number of devices that use touch panels; more players in the market; and rapid development of new products and new processes. Displaybank has released "Touch Panel Market Forecast and Cost/Issue/Industry Analysis for 2013" to provide industry outlook by application, product, and capacitive touch structure. The report also includes the supply chain of set makers and touch panel manufacturers; and cost analysis of major capacitive touch panels by size and type. This report will serve as a guide to bring clarity and understanding of rapidly transforming touch panel industry.

January 22, 2012 – The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Polymer Research (IAP) in Potsdam-Golm and fab/cleanroom developer MBRAUN have commissioned a new "near industrial-scale" pilot line for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and organic solar cells.

The 15m-long pilot line, dubbed the Pilot Plant for Solution-based Processes for Organic Electronics at Fraunhofer IAP’s Application Center for Innovative Polymer Technologies, was commissioned during a two-day workshop last week (Jan. 15-16) entitled "Solution-based Organic Electronics: From Materials to Technology."

Showing the new ability to extend of previous laboratory-scale work, part of the ceremony apparently included showing a 1:20 scale bus shelter (10cm high), designed by a joint project of IAP and fdesign and funded by the Federal Ministry of Research. The mini-shelter is solar powered with partially transparent organic solar cells integrated into the roof and sidewall; OLEDs display the schedule or give light signals when a bus arrives. The Potsdam Fraunhofer Institute developed the OLEDs as well as the organic solar cells.

"The model shows that organic electronics has great design potential for energy-saving, intelligent lighting control and information systems," stated Armin Wedel, division director at Fraunhofer IAP. "To apply these technologies to life-size street furniture, the new pilot line now offers the possibility to realize organic electronic components under near-industrial conditions — a crucial prerequisite for the later transfer into commercial products."

Martin Reinelt, CEO of MBRAUN, added his hope that such partnerships can "strengthen the German research landscape in order to compete successfully with American and Asian research institutions. We also want to demonstrate the performance of German plant manufacturing."