Yieldjet printer unveiled by US firm Kateeva able to produce OLED screens in high volumes, reducing costs of OLED televisions.
The Inquirer reported on the introduction of the “world’s first” mass-produced inkjet printer for the production of OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screens used for smartphones, tablets and TV displays.
California-based Kateeva unveiled the Yieldjet OLED printer, said to have been “engineered from the ground up” with the aim of producing high volumes of OLED screens at a low cost; with the firm explaining that its printer features three “innovations” that deem it the first of its kind – a pure nitrogen process chamber, due to nitrogen being the optimal environment for producing OLEDs; specialised mechanical design features allowing the printer to reduce particles “by as much as 10 times” to accelerate yield; and “film coating uniformity with a process window that’s five times wider than standard technologies” in order to improve reliability of the process.
The integration of such features, according to Kateeva, reduces the cost of mass producing OLEDs, resulting in the lowering of OLED TV prices on the market.
LG and Samsung are among technology manufacturers that have already introduced a range of OLED curved TV displays, with LG reportedly planning to start mass producing large size OLED display technology for TVs up to 50 inches in size in the second half of 2014.
The Recycler reported in July last year that inkjet technology techniques were helping to develop flexible electronics devices, with researchers from the Holst Centre, based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands developing a way of creating “tall, narrow conductive structures on flexible structures” using inkjet printing techniques that would result in the cheaper production of high-resolution touchscreen displays and OLEDs.