Seiko Epson (Suwon, Japan, www.epson.co.jp) reported today that it has developed color filter manufacturing equipment that will use inkjet printing. The new process could reduce the cost of color filter glass for LCDs by as much as 20-30%, said the company.

Chris Chinnock
Sr. Analyst and Sr. Editor
of Insight Media

This could be a big deal. The color filter glass on a large-sized LCD display can account for 20% of the material costs of the panel. LCD-TV product costs have been declining at 20-30% per year recently, so material suppliers need to keep up the pace of innovation to lower their costs, too. The announcement from Epson means the color filter process will meet these goals.

Today, the color filter glass is fabricated using a photolithography process where each color (red, green and blue) must be exposed and deposited in a series of steps. As manufacturers move to next generation substrate sizes, the cost of equipment to continue this process increases significantly. That’s why Seiko Epson turned to the inkjet process as a more cost efficient way to make the color filters.

Epson has developed equipment to handle Gen 8 sized motherglass, which is over 2meters on a side. And, it has cut a deal with Sharp to be the lead and exclusive user of the new equipment in Sharp’s new Gen 8 line (Kameyama 2), which became operational last month. Epson will soon offer the equipment to other manufacturers, too.

Seiko Epson expects sales from applying its printing technology to the industrial sector to reach 50 billion yen in 2010.

Inkjet printing is being adopted in many parts of the display industry, including OLEDs. But using the technology in Sharp’s Gen 8 plant represents the largest substrate size we have heard of so far. Other materials will need to do their part to keep the cost reduction train rolling, but it certainly appears that we are not yet running out of steam in the LCD cost-reduction movement yet. -CC