Chinese TCL To Produce OLED Displays At Home Using Inkjet Printer

The Chinese display specialist China Star Optoelectronics (CSOT) plans to build its first plant for the mass production of OLED screens from next year, in which the panels will be manufactured in a new way—such as with an inkjet printer.

As the Taiwanese industry service DigiTimes reports, CSOT plans to start building a so-called 8.5G fab in the city of Guangzhou in southeast China in 2021. According to the company’s wishes, the first OLED panels are to be manufactured there using inkjet printing within a few years. Mass production in the new plant is said to be targeted for 2024.

Technology is ready for mass production

CSOT has been working hard on the production of OLED panels using inkjet printing for several years. The company has already made significant advances in technology, including the actual manufacturing process, but also the production of the support levels required for the panels. In addition, new materials have been developed to ensure that the OLED displays manufactured using inkjet manufacture are able to display the largest possible color space. CSOT, which is part of the ecosystem around the Chinese television and smartphone manufacturer TCL, plans to invest the equivalent of around 6.8 billion dollars in its first factory for inject-printed OLED displays according to current knowledge.

Although the new technology promises cheaper production of OLED screens, it does not achieve the same high pixel densities as is usual for displays for smartphones and other compact electronic devices. Instead, the panels produced by inkjet printing are likely to be used primarily in televisions and other large-format devices. TCL had already shown the first prototypes of this type.