The new flagship of TCL China Star is coming

TCL China Star Printing OLED Center Director Cao Weiran

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Liu Baodan

As one of the global leaders in the panel industry, TCL China Star is once again making a significant impact on the market.

Recently, at the TCL China Star Printing OLED Technology Theme Exchange Conference, Cao Weiran, Director of the TCL China Star Printing OLED Center, revealed that TCL China Star is actively preparing for mass production of printing OLED. The equipment and production lines have been installed, and the first product, a display screen for medical equipment, has entered the trial production stage on the production line. It is expected to achieve formal mass production by the end of this year.

This means that after 11 years of laying out the new display technology of printing OLED, TCL China Star is finally entering the payoff period.

Today, OLED has become the mainstream choice in the smartphone field. More and more voices in the market indicate that OLED will lead future development trends in medium-sized devices such as tablets, laptops, and monitors. However, the popularization of OLED in the IT product field still faces the challenge of high costs brought by high investment.

Printing OLED technology refers to the production of OLED display panels through inkjet printing processes. Compared to traditional vacuum deposition processes, this technology can significantly reduce costs, achieve high PPI, and longer lifespan. Therefore, printing OLED technology is considered an important direction for the development of next-generation display technology.

In order to promote the industrialized mass production of printing OLED, in 2020, TCL China Star strategically invested 30 billion yen in JOLED. Last year, TCL China Star completed the installation of the first printing OLED production line equipment in Wuhan, and as of now this year, the construction and equipment debugging of the G5.5 production line have been preliminarily completed.

Regarding why it took so long to achieve mass production of printing OLED, Cao Weiran explained that it is related to the entire development process. Firstly, TCL China Star spent a lot of effort on changing the product direction. Initially, the resolution of printing OLED was not as high, so the early goal was in the television field. However, now it seems that MiniLED is a good direction in the television field, so TCL decided to shift the application direction of printing OLED towards monitors and laptops.

It is mentioned that there are many technical issues to be solved, and currently TCL China Star is mainly focusing on solving these technical problems.

Furthermore, Cao Weiran pointed out that the future of printing OLED is to achieve large-scale mass production, and the overall operational status is closely related to production capacity and yield. However, there has been very little data accumulation in this area before, so TCL China Star hopes to accumulate more yield improvement experience through this production line.

As for why medical equipment display screens were chosen as the first mass-produced product for printing OLED, Cao Weiran stated that this application field has higher specifications and not as high demand. Printing OLED is still in the trial production stage and cannot handle large quantities yet, so a product category with lower quantity requirements is chosen In addition, regarding the future application trends of OLED, Cao Weiran believes that after smartphones, tablets, laptops, and monitors will increasingly adopt OLED technology at a faster pace.

Currently, the biggest challenge facing printed OLED lies in market doubts about its performance. Cao Weiran stated that TCL CSOT has invested heavily and found solutions, but the production process of the entire panel is very complex, requiring good coordination between the front and back processes, and the yield rate is continuously increasing.

The semiconductor display panel industry is widely recognized as a cyclical industry. After experiencing the most severe winter in the semiconductor display industry in 2022, the industry has started to recover since the second half of last year. TCL Technology's semiconductor display business has also entered a phase of profit improvement, recently acquiring LG's Guangzhou LCD panel factory for 10.8 billion yuan.

Regarding the industry's future trends, Cao Weiran believes that it will enter a stage of gradual stabilization. Three major trends will emerge: the growth of panels brought by large-sized TVs; the increase in mobile devices such as laptops due to AIPC; and the shift towards OLED technology, with products possibly actively transitioning to OLED.

Clearly, to maintain its leading position in the panel industry and achieve further breakthroughs, TCL CSOT's choice to persist in investing in cutting-edge technology is a challenging yet correct path