What They Say
The ET News in Korea reported that a Korean start-up, Olum Material, has developed a new technique for shadow mask OLED deposition, replacing current fine metal masks (FMM). The company calls its approach a ‘unit cell FMM’ and allocates a mask to be used for each display and these are attached to a frame. The mask is said to not require tension and are half the 20?m thickness of traditional masks. The thinner masks are usable for medium sized panels for IT applications such as tablets and notebooks and for flexible OLEDs. Each display has its own mask, rather than a mask being used for multiple displays.
The firm claims that its technology boosts yields and throughput and that it has developed masks and frames forG2, G4 and G5.5 fabs while G6 is at the prototype stage.
The thinner mask allows higher resolution and the company said that it can make masks for foldable devices up to QuadHD.
What We Think
Unfortunately, OLUM’s website is not available in anything except Korean and the pages are presented as graphics, so translate services are tricky. We have reached out to the company for more information and will report back as I’d like to get a clearer picture of what the firm is doing. One of the reasons that Kodak was not able to develop its OLED business many years ago was the difficulty in patterning larger OLED displays and despite years (decades) of work, it is still, basically, being done the same way, with FMM. Inkjet Printing is generating some interest as we seem to be almost on the cusp of industrialisation for TV applications, but that technology will have limits for a long time on the largest PPI that it can achieve, so FMM will remain important for mobile and IT devices. (BR)
Researchers from Olum Material are examining the company’s fine metal mask
