What They Say
LG Display said that it will boost the efficiency and brightness of its OLEDs by 20% saying
“Through newly developed and highly efficient materials as well as the addition of a layer to the display, thereby improving its efficiency by around 20%.”
However, we have heard that LG may be offering up to a 50% boost in brightness. Barry Young of the OLED Association told us that LGD has said that it hopes to get to that level, eventually, but has not put a time on it.
The higher brightness OLEDs will be sold at a premium.
What We Think
I have said for a couple of years that OLED needed to keep improving in the critical brightness area if it was not to be eventually eclipsed by the relentless improvements in LCD (via miniLED or dual layer or any other way). A boost of 50% would be good, indeed after several years of stalling.
Now, part of the improvement seemed clear to me – it involved the use of a metal plate on the back of the OLED display which acts by passively cooling the display to allow higher driving of the OLED to produce more brightness, without causing a degradation in image sticking or lifetime. This strategy had previously used by Panasonic in its high end sets and it seemed that LG has now developed this in house (or worked with Panasonic on it) and was offering it to other brands.
However, it seems that the ‘highly efficient materials’ may be new OLED materials that are more efficient, or allow higher output without impacting the lifetime. The challenge for LG Display may well be to get balanced performance to maintain the colour well if the materials are only in one colour. In an RGB structure, a brighter red or green would allow more space for the other colours, which would help. Could that be what Samsung is doing to boost the brightness on the Galaxy S21 series?
In trying to chase this down, I listened to a talk by Sidney Rosenblatt of UDC, given during January, who said that it is working all the time on different materials (not just blue) but different reds and greens.
(As an interesting point, Rosenblatt said that in 2021, the firm’s contract with Tianma expires. Samsung and LG both have long term contracts due for renewal at the end of 2022, although Samsung has a two year option to extend. Those are discussions and negotiations where it would be interesting to be a fly on the wall! Sadly, he didn’t give any clues about new materials.)
I have a lot more digging to do on this and will report back! (BR)
