LG confirms that its next-generation OLED technology will come to laptops and monitors first, and gives us a rough timeline, but don’t expect it to come to TVs anytime soon.
- LG’s FLiPP technology could deliver tandem OLED performance for much less
- It will arrive on smaller screens first, don’t expect it on TVs for several years.
- Production of laptop screens and monitors could begin in 2027
If you’re a fan of OLED, there’s an interesting new acronym you should know: FLiPP. It stands for innovative pixel pattern without FMM, and the FMM bit refers to thin metal masks. They are typically used in OLED manufacturing to precisely position organic emitting materials.
With FLiPP, there is no mask. Instead, materials are deposited on glass, given a protective coating, and then refined using photolithography and etching to remove unwanted sections.
The biggest advantage of FLiPP is efficiency. According to trade site The Elec, LG Display found that the technology increased the utilization rate (the efficiency of production) from 75% in a conventional FMM process to more than 93% in a FLiPP process.
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This is good news for us, because more efficient production means lower production costs. And that ultimately means we could see much better OLEDs without higher prices.
FLiPP also improved the utilization of organic emitting materials from 40% to 74%, increased the pixel aperture ratio (how much of the pixel area emits light) to 65%, and enabled the light emitting area to increase luminance by 1.6 times, longevity by 2.4 times, or reduce power consumption by 13%.
That means these OLED displays can be brighter, more reliable, or can consume less power, depending on device preference. But in the near future, those devices will almost certainly be laptops and monitors, and not TVs, unfortunately for those desperate for the price of the best OLED TVs to drop.
What the hell is FLiPP?
LG Display Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Choi Young-seok says the technology is still in the early stage of development. The next stage would be the development of actual products and the third stage is mass production.
That third stage will initially focus on the monitor market, where screens are smaller (the improved efficiency figures mentioned above were for 23.5-inch panels), but laptops are apparently on the cards as well. LG Display has said it hopes to reach this point by the end of 2027, so the first products could appear at CES 2028.
According to Cho Heung-ryeol, head of the Next Generation Display Division, LG Display is currently evaluating its existing LCD and WOLED production lines to see if they can be reused without major modifications, or if a new plant would need to be purchased. The first option is, of course, the preferred one. Either way, LG Display still plans for production to begin in about a year.
If you want to know more about the technical side of FLiPP and how it compares to other OLED manufacturing processes, The Elec has published a transcript of LG Display’s webinar and you can read it here.
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