OLED Materials – Market Update

By AZoM

Introduction
Growing Demand for OLED Panels
Factors that Could Challenge the Growing OLED Market
About NanoMarkets

Introduction

There have been significant changes in the Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) market in the previous year. It looks like the technology has finally taken off and the potential for OLEDs will make a real impact on the display markets.

Growing Demand for OLED Panels

There is a high demand across the OLED industry and there is a great boom in the sector. There is a growth in all segments on a per-unit basis from passive matrix(PM) to advanced AM OLEDs for TVs, computers and white-emitting OLED panels for lighting applications. According to NanoMarkets, there will be a growth in the value of OLED markets from about $524 million in 2012 to over $7.4 billion by the end of the forecast period in 2019. Out of that, the core value, functional OLED materials such as emitters, dopants, hosts, electron and hole injection, blocking and transport materials, other than substrates, electrodes and encapsulation materials will reach nearly $370 million this year, and grow to over $2.9 billion by 2019, corresponding to about 71 and 39 % of the total OLED materials market, respectively.

This growth will be realized through the following key trends:

Phones and tablets: Samsung is the leader in the OLED market at least for AM OLED displays so it is important that other panel makers also enter this market to establish OLEDs as something more than specialty products and to increase the customer base for OLED materials. This shift is taking place with Taiwanese OLED manufacturers Chimei Innolux, AU Optronics(AUO) and Chinese OLED manufacturer Tianma hoping to increase production shortly. There are also a number of rumors that an OLED display may be adopted by Apple, which will expand the addressable display market significantly.
TVs: Secondly, as is detailed in the report material suppliers not only require high unit sales but also need large average panel sizes to see a significant increase in material demand. Large-area OLED TVs from Samsung and from display maker LG display will be launched in the market in 2012. In case the industry can meet its cost goals as well as convince customers of OLED TV value, they will generate significant revenues from material sales in the coming ten years.
Lighting: There is a disappointingly slow but steady progress of OLED lighting, which is a market having a potentially large panel area that will translate into high material demand. NanoMarkets finally believes that the coming three or four years will be a critical manufacturing and development phase for this market, which begin in 2015 – 2016.

Factors that Could Challenge the Growing OLED Market

A number of challenges are met by each industry segment that may or may not hold up demand, may of which provide opportunities for suppliers to respond with a material solution.

Manufacturing capacity and scale up are the major challenges for smaller displays. Presently Samsung is the only firm manufacturing small sized AM OLEDs in significant quantities and while Samsung is in the beginning stages and still there is a lot of room for performance enhancement and manufacturing yields, the firm has almost convinced its customers of the value of OLEDs in mobile computing devices.

As there is a further expansion in Samsung, and as there is growth in other display manufacturers, there will definitely be growth in materials demand, especially if there is an increasing market share in tablet computers.

Even though OLED TVs will become available, they will not reach the average customer. Hence it is important there is a reduction in prices, meaning there need to be ways to cut costs in manufacturing. There will be some cost reduction by enhancing manufacturing yields, enhancing processes and economies of scale. However material suppliers need to play a significant role.

Furthermore, one still needs to be clear whether present OLED material sets can offer lifetimes needed in the OLED TV sector. OLED TVs will definitely have longer life when compared to the average mobile computing device. Hence a distinct competitive advantage can be created by the development and commercialization of new material sets that solve the lifetime problem.

It will be actually possible to obtain high revenues in the OLED lighting sector if OLED lighting can move out of its present designer kits and luxury luminaire phase into high-volume, large area general illumination markets such as office lighting. Material and material methods enabling large area/low-cost OLED panel production through solution processing are promising.

It is also important that lifetime in the OLED lighting market is greatly enhanced. Lighting products will have longer service lifetimes when compared to the average display and must compete with inorganic LED lighting products having a very long life. Hence lifetime is another area in which material suppliers can promise value.

About NanoMarkets

NanoMarkets is a leading provider of market research and industry analysis of opportunities within advanced materials and emerging energy and electronics markets. Since the firm’s founding, NanoMarkets has published over one hundred comprehensive research reports on emerging technology markets. Topics covered have included OLED displays, lighting and materials, thin-film electronics, conductive inks, transparent conductors, renewable energy, printed electronics and other promising technologies. Our client roster is a who’s who of companies in specialty chemicals, materials, electronics applications and manufacturing.