SDC and Quantum DOT OLED Model
SDC is estimated to invest 13 trillion Won to convert the Tangjeong L8 LCD production line to QD OLED (quantum dot) production. We estimate that OLED conversion is typically a 1.25x increase versus the original LCD facility and equipment costs. The 1.25x guidance is based on LG Display’s 4Q11 conference call where LGD detailed:
- ‘capital of a new OLED 8.5G would be approximately 2.5 times the cost of a similar capacity LCD fab’ and ‘if you convert an existing fab it would be half that amount’.
Given that the original facility cost L8-1 and L8-2 was $6.3B through 2008 the 13 trillion investment seems reasonable. There has likely been investment since 2008 and we provide supporting fab costs details from 2006 to 2008 in our Cost Model.
We estimate that L8-1 and L8-2 will be able to produce 200,000 Gen8 QD-OLED versus the current 360,000 LCD substrates. Mass Production is scheduled to begin in 2022. As a result, the industry will benefit from decreased panel capacity. We have reduced SDC’s LCD production starting in 4Q19 for these fabs, and created a L8-1 QDOLED and L8-2 QDOLED facilities as a placeholder in our should-cost model.
Advantages to Samsung Display
Per Nanosys, one of QD’s advantages over current OLED RGB emissive systems is that each of the colors have different aging lifetimes (e.g. color shift, etc.). For example, with conventional white OLED the yellow emissive OLED ages differentially and creates a burn-in. Rather than using multiple emissive colors a company can use just a blue emissive layer. Using a blue emissive layer all of the color is converted at the subpixel (e.g. red or green) by quantom dots. Then the number of blue photons impact the amount of red or green. As the blue OLED uniformly ages the red and the green will get dimmer at the same rate. This reduces the burn-in for OLED.
For microLED putting down an array of three colors (RGB) it is difficult for the printing process with slightly different voltage and drive current. If you must make a blue microLED array all of the pixels are the same (voltages and drive currents). Then you do the color conversion ontop of it.
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