Chi Mei EL (CMEL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Chi Mei Optoelectronics -Taiwan’s second largest LCD panel maker - will begin volume production of 2.4-inch active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) display panels before the end of this month, CMEL president Zhe-yang (Peter) Chen announced yesterday. Chen said one customer intends to market mobile handsets using the displays in Japan this October.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

Chen expects total shipments of CMEL AMOLED panels to exceed 200K units a month in February 2008 if ramp-up of the 2.4-inch AMOLEDs proceeds as planned. In that case, CMEL which reach break-even that month, Chen said.

Samsung SDI, the first company to begin volume AMOLED production, is currently producing a 2.4-inch unit for mobile handset applications. LCD panel makers say that the most popular size for cell-phone displays is now 2.4 inches, up from 1.8 inches not long ago, and that there is a growing demand for 2.8-inch displays.

But demand is also increasing for displays with 3- to 5-inch diagonals for mobile handsets, mobile television and personal media player applications, with wide formats in demand in these larger sizes. As a result, CMEL will start sampling a 4.3-inch AMOLED in September of this year, and will exhibit the product at Flat Panel Display International, to be held in Yokohama in October. Chen said volume production of the 4.3-inch will begin in 2008.

But CMEL intends to go beyond those sizes for its AMOLED panels. Chen said the company will begin manufacturing 8.1-inch panels in 2H’08 for the digital photo-frame market.

Cell-phone makers have been slow to adopt AMOLED displays despite their impressive image quality and power savings. The reason is cost. Prices for cell-phone displays have been double that of equivalent LCDs. One reason is low yields. Sources have informed me the main contributor to these low yields is the low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) process, which is topping out at 70% yields at the moment. The vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE) process by which the OLED materials are deposited, in contrast, has a yield in the high 90s, although it is very wasteful of materials.

Chen cited yield rates that are consistent with these numbers. Current overall yields for CMEL’s 2-inch panels is 60%. Chen expects that to improve to 70% by year’s end and to 80% in 2008. That would be world-class, given current AMOLED manufacturing technologies.

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