According to Korean media, Chinese display maker HKC is preparing a new round of investment in OLED production.
A person familiar with the industry said HKC is currently the most active company when it comes to OLED investment talks. The discussions are already quite detailed, and the company is expected to officially announce its investment plan between August and September, with vendor selection to be completed within this year. The highlight of the project is likely to be the 6th-generation non-cut evaporation technology, which HKC has never tried before.
This non-cut evaporation process keeps the entire glass substrate intact throughout the evaporation stage, instead of cutting it. The goal is to improve production efficiency, lower costs, and make large-size OLED panels easier to mass produce.
Currently, most panel makers using 6th-gen OLED lines keep the mother glass whole during the TFT process, but cut it in half before evaporation - a method known as "half-cut."
HKC's decision to go full non-cut is made possible because 8.6-generation half-cut equipment has become common in the industry. When an 8.6-gen substrate is cut in half, the resulting size is quite close to a standard 6th-gen panel.
Last year, HKC acquired 6th-gen equipment from Japan Display Inc. (JDI). The company plans to reuse this equipment, add new supporting lines, and pursue two different evaporation technologies at the same time: traditional Fine Metal Mask (FMM) and JDI's maskless eLEAP technology.
eLEAP uses an open metal mask (OMM) instead of a fine metal mask, allowing red, green, and blue pixels to be deposited without cutting the substrate. This fits perfectly with HKC's non-cut approach.
With this setup, HKC's TFT process will stay similar to its existing 6th-gen lines, but the later stages should become much more efficient since there's no need to cut and handle two separate halves. Fewer process steps generally mean higher throughput.
The reason most companies still use the half-cut method is that larger glass sheets are harder to control - they tend to warp more easily, making it difficult to keep everything flat for precise FMM alignment.
If successful, this project could help HKC stand out in the increasingly competitive OLED market with a more cost-effective manufacturing method.
