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​Lori Hamilton, Director, Commercial Technology, Corning Glass
November 18, 2019
 
Lori L. Hamilton was appointed director, Commercial Technology for Corning Glass Technologies in April 2014. She works closely with the division Commercial Technology Directors to ensure a coordinated set of activities against customers and technologies. She and her team develop Glass Technologies Business Group capabilities that have broad applicability and longer-term potential fostering product opportunities that demonstrate new value propositions for flat glass. 

Lori expressed optimism that over the next 2-3 years, the new Gen 10.5 fab from BOE, CSoT and Foxconn would offset the closing and conversions. Part of her reasoning is that the average TV size has been increasing by 1.5”/year. We disagreed citing our calculations, previously published, indicating the closings and conversions would more than offset the added Gen 10.5 capacity and that was good for LCD display makers, but she deferred to Corning’s planning group, which was not available prior to publishing. It should be noted that while Corning is the preferred supplier of Samsung and BOE, LG and CSoT use glass from Corning’s competitors
 
The use of IGZO is the preferred backplane technology for large area OLEDs but is also being used in Gen 8.5 fabs for LCD TVs. There are also reports that BOE is using IGZO in their Gen 10.5 fab.  IGZO requires higher temperatures than a-Si and is subject to issues of dimensional stability. Hamilton reported that in May’19, Corning introduced Corning® Astra™ Glass designed specifically for IGZO backplanes to withstand higher temperatures and the new glass will be used by Chengdu CEC Panda Display Technology Co., Ltd., (CCPD) in their new Gen 8.5 fab.
 
Hamilton discussed flexible glass explaining that 100µm Willow glass was designed for R-T-R processes is too thin for today’s batch display processes, although it is used in OLED lighting panels. They have shifted their attention to UTG, but she was not ready to discuss the specifications or status. Samsung, Royole and Huawei are using PI substrates that have glass carriers and CPI for the cover lens. As the foldable manufacturing technology matures, panel makers seem to be shifting to UTG for the flexible cover lens and Samsung is experimenting with Dowoo Insys glass supplied by Schott. If UTG proves adequate for foldable displays, it could also replace Gorilla Glass as a thinner protective layer for all displays. Hamilton was not ready to comment, but indicated that the effort to develop a product with UTG involves the integration of many layers and needs quite a bit of testing and qualification and that Corning was hard at work to come up with the best product.

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