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| Merck Korea CEO Michael Grund, left, poses with winners of this year's company awards, second from left and third from left, and company President Walter Galinat during a ceremony on the sidelines of "2015 International Meeting of Information Display" conference in Daegu, Friday. / Courtesy of Merck Korea |
Cheaper OLED materials help Korean firms
By Kim Yoo-chul
Merck, a global leader in performance materials, will accelerate the development of cheaper organic light-emitting diode (OLED) materials to help LG Display and Samsung Display take bigger stakes in the growing large-sized OLED market.
Samsung and LG's tech affiliates have identified the OLED business as one of their growth engines amid the rise of Chinese TV rivals, as OLED displays have some stunning features in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT).
But the global OLED market is yet to take off, mostly due to high costs and low production yields. Experts say cutting the price of basic OLED materials is the key issue for market expansion because the biggest TV maker, Samsung, is still reluctant to jump into the market.
"Merck has a strong commitment to developing OLED technology so as to make it more suitable for large-size displays," Walter Galinat, president of Merck's performance materials division, said during the International Meeting of Information Display (IMID) in the provincial city of Daegu. "A promising approach is OLED production with the help of inkjet technology."
He said the German company's main goal is to help its "key customers" in Korea further increase their productivity in OLED panel making. "Merck will continue efforts based on our customer-centric strategy of helping our customers succeed in their markets,"he said.
The inkjet technology is considered by many as the "right technology," rather than today's spin-coating technology, to enable heavy cuts in OLED panel prices, if it reaches a mature level for mass production.
Over the past few years, Merck has teamed closely with LG Display and Samsung Display to produce cheaper OLED materials.
LG Display, the world's biggest display supplier, is better placed than rival Samsung Display to use Merck's inkjet-based OLED materials because it wants to create an "OLED ecosystem" focusing on televisions. Samsung Group's display unit is still gauging the timing for large-sized OLEDs.
"If Samsung joins with LG in large-sized OLEDs, then this will help Korea expand the country's current leadership in the global display industry to OLEDs ahead of China," Han Sang-beom, chief executive at LG Display, said recently. "It's too early to talk about the timing of mass production of inkjet-based OLED displays. But I have to agree that materials hold the key for innovation in displays."
LG is testing the profitability of inkjet-based OLED technology in equipment supplied by Tokyo Electron.
An official at Samsung Display said it was in talks with Merck over the development of OLED materials for next-generation digital applications.
But Samsung remained tight-lipped about its strategies for inkjet-based OLED displays as its mother company, Samsung Electronics, is pushing the sale of TVs using quantum dots.
Officials say the large-size OLED market may become the mainstream in late 2018 because a few more years will be needed to guarantee productivity of inkjet OLEDs.
"It will be interesting to see which Korean company will be the winner in the fight for next-generation displays," said an official at a Samsung technology affiliate.
"LG aims to lead; however, Samsung has strengths in marketing thanks to the amount of its cash holdings. In displays, LG Display will effectively compete with Samsung Display. But in the set-making business, it's very unlikely that LG Electronics will lead Samsung Electronics in OLED TVs as LG Electronics prefers to promote ‘something new' in selected markets due to the lack of cash."
