According to the news from the industrial chain, in order to cooperate with Apple's medium-sized OLED panel capacity planning, Samsung display, LGD and BOE are ready to transform their production lines and first pilot produce medium-sized flexible OLED panels in the industry.

Among them, BOE plans to change the application of phase III production line of Chongqing B12 factory into the production line of smart phone, it and OLED panel for vehicle. The production lines in Chengdu and Mianyang, as well as the existing production lines in Chongqing B12, still maintain the supply of smart phone OLED panels to the market.

Later last year, LGD also invested in its subsequent six generation flexible OLED panel production line and changed it into a production line compatible with medium-sized panels. The external interpretation is also to meet the needs of apple.

In addition, Samsung is also waiting for Apple's approval to invest in the 8th.5th generation it OLED production facility next to the current qd-oled production line.

Samsung's display technology route is more radical. It has developed a vertical deposition device in cooperation with ULVAC in Japan to evaporate the OELD light-emitting layer. What technology Samsung display and ULVAC use to guide the OLED light-emitting material vapor to move horizontally in the evaporation chamber is not very clear to the outside world at present.

The previous evaporation technology of RGB luminescent materials used the relatively high-temperature steam rising after the sublimation of the luminescent target. After passing through the FMM ultra-thin metal mask, the contact substrate was cooled and solidified into a solid organic cross-linked luminescent layer. Therefore, the FMM ultra-thin metal mask was adsorbed on the substrate workbench through magnetic force and pressed the substrate for work.

Due to the large substrate size of generation 8.5 line, FMM ultra-thin metal mask is easy to sag and deform, resulting in pixel evaporation deformation or inaccurate alignment. Therefore, OLED RGB horizontal evaporation technology has always stopped at generation 6 line. If the vertical deposition technology of ULVAC is conquered, the size of RGB OLED panel will no longer be limited to the 6th generation panel production line and medium-sized display, and will become a strong competitor of LGD white OLED + RGB filter film technology.

Two years after Apple's medium-sized iPad and MAC OLED display team withdrew from South Korea, apple still insisted on changing the formula and mass production process route with upstream material suppliers.

In order to cooperate with the latest HDR video technology, apple listed OLED panel technology as the main display technology of small-size consumer electronics, while the corresponding medium and large-size video productivity tool electronics adopt 6K ~ 8K mini-LED backlight LCD technology to improve the depth of field and image precision resolution of HDR.

However, Apple's display team, under the joint development of Samsung display and LGD in South Korea for many years, neither RGB evaporation technology nor white light + RGB filter film technology has overcome Apple's technical and quality requirements for medium-sized OLED panels.

In order not to lag behind in HDR video technology, Apple has temporarily launched a small and medium-sized consumer electronic display with mini-LED backlight LCD technology, which is configured on iPad and MAC products, using the technology of Taiwan's Micro LED R & D team.

When Apple launched the iPhone OLED display, it mainly broke through the technology of red OLED light-emitting materials with material suppliers, while on the medium-sized OLED display, apple faced the technological breakthrough of blue OLED materials.

It is said that in order to make up for the short board of display technical parameters in the medium size of existing RGB OLED products, Apple has developed a double-layer RGB OLED light-emitting layer technology with Samsung display and LGD. However, due to the high production cost, Apple has not reached a real mass production agreement with Samsung display and LGD.

However, apple believes that the double-layer RGB OLED light-emitting layer technology, like the ltpo TFT backplane technology, is to add a new functional layer to achieve a better display technology level. Therefore, it should not be the reason for the excessive cost growth of the panel factory to achieve mass production benefits.

However, unlike the functional layer of ltpo TFT backplane, which only focuses on the circuit voltage drop, the functional layer of OLED light-emitting layer mainly considers the luminous photon accumulation efficiency, which directly affects the driving time and driving power of pixel devices. Therefore, when the yield of single-layer OLED light-emitting layer is difficult to control, it is very difficult to continue to increase the manufacturing times of light-emitting layer for the control of panel production line.

The technical route given by apple now is similar to folding the TFT backplane driving layer and combining it with two RGB OLED light-emitting layers. The two RGB OLED light-emitting layers are also isolated, which is more conducive to the yield control of the production line.

Apple also conducted a combination test of a white OLED light-emitting layer and a RGB OLED light-emitting layer, hoping to reduce the evaporation times of the light-emitting layer to improve the production efficiency of the production line.

In fact, these technologies are some revisions of expired patents in the OLED industry. Only after Apple turned them out and reassembled the technology, the industry changed the concept that this kind of OLED panel products cannot be mass produced, slowly tossed with apple, and excluded non Apple competitors from the technology application scenario, And this has always been what apple is good at.