Chemtronics will start construction of its display back-end etching factory for Gen 8 OLED panels, TheElec has learned.
The company will be the exclusive back-end etcher for Samsung Display’s OLED panels aimed at IT devices, sources said. The South Korean display panel maker will, in turn, supply these panels to Apple for use in tablets.
The construction ceremony will take place on November 15 and will be attended by Samsung executives and the mayor of Sejong City, where the factory will be built.
Chemtronics has spent 94.9 billion won in the project so far and Samsung reportedly also pitched in some funds for the line building.
These investments were first announced in June 2023 with the first package of 15.9 billion won; the company subsequently announced another 57.6 billion won in November 2023 and 21.4 billion own in August 2024, all for the building of what it called a large-scale etching-related facility.
Samsung Display will send its Gen 8 OLED panels with organic material deposition and encapsulation finished from its A6 line to Chemtronics' new factory, where the glass substrate at the bottom of the panel will be etched thinly.
Samsung Display is yet to start production of Gen 8 OLED panels; for the panels used in iPads Pros this year, it used its exiting Gen 6 OLED lines.
Samsung Display and LG Display manufactured what they call hybrid OLED panels to supply to Apple this year, where a glass substrate and encapsulation is used for the display panels. Premium OLED panels used in smartphones are flexible OLED panels where the substrate is plastic instead of glass.
The glass substrate in hybrid OLED panels is etched from 0.5mm thickness to 0.2mm, a process Chemtronics handled for Samsung Display for the panels used in Cupertino’s latest tablets.