Improve brightness and lifespan! LG Display will mass produce four-stack W-OLED panels at Guangzhou OLED factory

Although OLED TVs are still niche high-end products, related technology iterations have been ongoing.

On January 7, LG Display plans to launch TV panels with four-stack WOLED technology in 2025. It is reported that the new structure of white (W) organic light-emitting diode (OLED) products can effectively improve brightness. It is reported that LG Display has completed the mass production preparations for the new structure W-OLED at its OLED factory in Guangzhou, China.

The most obvious disadvantages of OLED TVs are short lifespan and insufficient brightness.

To this end, LG Display has launched the third-generation OLED TV panel equipped with META Technology, which combines microlens arrays (MLA) and enhanced brightness algorithms to further improve the brightness and viewing angle of the panel. It is reported that the brightness of the panel has increased from the previous maximum of 1300nit to 2100nit, and the viewing angle has also increased by 30%. This technology not only improves energy efficiency by about 22%, but also enhances color reproduction and immersion.

However, the cost of microlens arrays is relatively high, which is not conducive to the large-scale application of OLED TVs. In January 2024, LG Display was first reported to be developing a new 4-layer OLED TV panel.

In August 2024, LG Display publicly released this next-generation OLED technology at the IMID conference in South Korea and launched a smaller prototype. The technology is expected to increase brightness by 25%, have a longer service life and higher efficiency.

LG Display said: "Existing WOLED panels stack the light-emitting layer into three layers (3-stack), but the newly launched technology stacks one more layer and improves the light-emitting element and blue light-emitting material."

Earlier, Ross Young, co-founder and CEO of display market research company DSCC. Ross Young revealed, "LG Display has been continuously developing 4-stack WOLED solutions, which may enable them to remove MLA because of the high cost of MLA materials. It is expected to achieve a peak brightness of 3,700 nits in 2025."

According to the latest report from Korean media TheElec, the core highlight of the new W-OLED is the innovative change in its stacking method. The previous W-OLED was a three-layer three-stack structure with three light-emitting layers, and LG Display plans to start producing four-stack W-OLED products with four light-emitting layers in its OLED factory in Guangzhou from 2025.

It is reported that the light-emitting layers of the three-layer W-OLED are arranged in the order of blue (B)-green (G), yellow-green (YG), and red (R)-blue (B) from bottom to top. The four-stack W-OLED stacks the light-emitting layers in the order of blue (B)-green (G)-blue (B)-red (R).

In the previous three-stack mode, the green (G), yellow-green (YG) and red (R) in the middle position together form a stack. Under the new four-stack system, they are split into green (G) and red (R), each of which is an independent stack.

With the increase in the number of stacks, the light generated by each layer is superimposed on each other, resulting in a significant increase in the overall light emission, which in turn promotes an increase in brightness. LG Display intends to be the first to apply the four-stack W-OLED technology to the field of TV panels.

The four-layer W-OLED TV panel that LG Display plans to launch in 2025 is expected to be positioned in the high-end market, targeting consumers who pursue the ultimate visual experience. This new panel significantly improves brightness and energy efficiency by adopting a four-layer stacked OLED solution, with a peak brightness of up to 3700 nits, while reducing manufacturing costs, which is expected to alleviate the price pressure of high-brightness OLED TVs, thereby promoting the popularity of OLED TVs.

In addition, after QD-OLED and microlens (MLA), the next major advancement in OLED technology is the transition from fluorescent to phosphorescent (PHOLED) blue. This transition will increase the internal luminous efficiency of blue from 25% to 100%, with the potential to reduce the power consumption of the entire OLED display by up to 25% - or make the screen brighter.

It is reported that LG Display has successfully developed a new OLED panel using blue "dream OLED material". The panel is a double-stacked tandem OLED that uses a hybrid method that combines fluorescent and phosphorescent blue OLEDs to improve efficiency while ensuring a comparable service life to existing OLED panels.