The Japanese company JOLED has announced that it has begun shipping OLED displays that are inkjet-printed organic RGB LEDs. There are no analogues to this production in the world yet, although specialized Chinese companies are also moving towards industrial display printing. For JOLED, the journey from experimental inkjet OLED production to mass production of displays took four years, but they did it!

Inkjet technology has been around for a long time in the production of displays. For example, some LCD panel manufacturers use inkjet printing to make color filters for displays. But no one has yet begun to print the entire array of LEDs on a production scale. Nobody except the Japanese represented by JOLED. Printing LEDs is much faster, easier, and cheaper than today’s vacuum chamber vapor deposition technology, as all OLED manufacturers do today.

Benefits of inkjet printing for OLED panel production

In short, JOLED began producing the first prototype OLED prints in 2017. The company began producing trial batches of displays using the new technology in 2019. Yesterday, the JOLED plant went into operation on an industrial scale and began to supply the first mass-produced products in the form of displays with a diagonal of 10 to 32 inches.

JOLED OLED Product Samples

The printed displays are produced by a rebuilt factory in Nomi, acquired from Japan Display. The facility in Nomi is capable of processing 20 5.5G substrates per month (substrate dimensions 1300 × 1500 mm). The displays are assembled at another company site – a plant in Chiba.

The printed panels are very thin – 1,3 mm thick and therefore very light. Pixel density is 204 dpi with maximum brightness of 350 cd / mXNUMX²… The company expects OLEDIO-branded printed OLEDs to be suitable for high-quality displays such as medical displays, but will also produce displays for general office and home use.