UBI Research has released some information about the OLED encapsulation market to promote its market report. The company said that it believes that TFE (thin film encapsulation) will dominate the market with 70% of the market for OLEDs using that method by 2021. Originally, TFE used as many as 11 layers to protect flexible OLEDs, which cannot be protected with glass and frit. However the technology has evolved down to just three layers, UBI said.
TFE has seen a reduction in the number of layers needed over recent years. Image:UBI
TFE uses both vapour deposition for the inorganic layers, while inkjet is typically used for the organic layers. The demand for OLED encapsulation means that there will be a big market for equipment and the company believes that the value of the market over the next five years is $11.2 billion, with most of the money being spent on the PECVD equipment.
Encapsulation equipment will be a good market. Image:Meko. Data:UBI
Analyst Comment
This forecast for PECVD is in contrast to the forecast from DSCC that we reported on from the SID Business Conference, that Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) would be the dominant technology for encapsulation. We reported last year that there was a lot of activity on ALD in Korea (Kateeva Bullish on Encapsulation – Koreans to Adopt ALD?) (BR)
