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LG Display Starts Ordering Equipment for Gen 10.5 Fab
February 19, 2018
 
LG Display has begun to order equipment for its Gen 10.5 OLED Fab in Paju, South Korea.  LG is clearly breaking new ground literally and figuratively, as the deposition tools will be one-of-a-kind, which makes early ordering even more critical and the tool ordering process began in early in 2017 by securing a place in the deposition tool queue with Letters of Intent, and while not legally binding, it likely began the R&D needed by the tool vendor to develop a Gen 10.5 deposition process tool.
 
The P10 fab will be the largest format OLED fab unless ChinaStar is able to open their Gen 11 fab more quickly.  However, ChinaStar is building 2 Gen 11 Fabs and the OLED segment is expected to be part of the 2nd fab. The LGD fab substrate will be 3370 x 2940 mm or 9.9m2, while the ChinaStar sheets will be 10.12m2, just 2.2% larger.  Both fabs will be use IGZO (Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide aka ‘Oxide”) backplanes, currently used by LG in their Gen 8.5 OLED fabs. There are a great number of challenges presented to panel producers both by using IGZO for TFT backplanes and handling large sheet sizes, so both fab projects will be ‘learning experiences’ in their early stages.  The phase 1 start date for LG’s p10 is currently projected to be Q119 with Phase 2 beginning relatively quickly.  The LGD P10 fab is expected to cost a bit under $3b, with the construction phase costing ~$1.7b and have capacity for 30,000 sheets/month, however there is a chance that the initial LG might mitigate the risk by using 7,500 sheets/month for OLED and 7,500 sheets for LCD displays. At 100% yield, 7,500 sheets/month would produce 720,000 65” OLED TVs or 540,000 75” OLED TVs/year in addition to LG Display’s other OLED TV production lines. LG Display currently produces its OLED TV panels on Gen 8.5 lines, which are able to produce 2.37m 65” OLED TVs and 1.6m 75” OLED TVs so the phase 1 lines of P10 will add ~30% to LG Display’s OLED TV capacity.