By Yoon Sung-won
Samsung and LG are boosting R&D of the next-generation display technology quantum-dot light-emitting diode (QLED).
According to the industry, Tuesday, Samsung Electronics has recently organized a unit dedicated to developing QLED TVs. Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) Senior Vice President Chang Hyuk will likely lead the new unit.
The move came as the world’s largest electronics maker is pushing to accelerate the introduction of QLED TVs by solving technological complexities, aiming at outcompeting LG Electronics’ organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TVs. As the company holds about a 22 percent share of the global TV market, its early launch of QLED TVs is expected to further expand its market presence.
Since Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman and semiconductor business division chief Kwon Oh-hyun came to have a multiple role as Samsung Display CEO in April, expectations have been that Samsung may implement a restructuring in its display business in a way to compensate for the decreasing profitability of its liquid crystal display (LCD) sector.
“The company needed a dedicated body to speed up the development of QLED technologies and apply them to more diverse items such as semiconductors and bio products because the research and development of quantum-dot (QD) technologies have been ambiguously run by Samsung Electronics’ visual display division and SAIT,” an industry source said.
QLED displays use QD semiconductor particle smaller than 10 nanometers, which is an inorganic substance that generates light without backlight like OLEDs. Once it is realized and become fully functional, QLED is considered to be the mainstream of future display technology because QLED displays are cheaper to produce while being capable of stably producing clear images.
So far, display industry experts have pointed out that marketable QLED technologies still have long way to go to be realized not only because QD is currently not free from the use of harmful cadmium materials but also the manufacturing technologies for it have not been prepared.
“To realize QLED, QD materials should be able to generate light by itself through ultraviolet ray or extra voltage. But this problem has not been solved yet in the academia,” said Hyeon Teag-hwan, Seoul National University chemical and biological engineering professor and the organizing committee head of the International Conference on Quantum Dots, in May. “Semiconductor and chemical researchers have much to do to in the development of QD technologies like chemical synthesis using surfactants.”
Lee Chang-hee, an electrical engineering and computer science professor at Seoul National University, said Samsung may be able to produce a QLED TV using non-cadmium material five years from now if it pushes for an aggressive group-wise effort to develop QLED technologies.
Meanwhile, LG Display has also expanded cooperation with the world’s leading quantum-dot (QD) materials businesses including Nanoco, Nanosys and QD Vision, aiming at accumulating technological know-how in the QLED sector, which it expects to be a key display technology of the future beyond its organic light-emitting diode (OLED). Under the collaboration, LG Display has recently developed QD sheets, which can be used for LCD-based QD TVs.
LG has also launched a group-wide project to boost cooperation among affiliates such as LG Electronics, LG Display and LG Innotek for research on QD materials and QLED TVs.
“While the company is pushing OLED TVs now, we are also looking into QLED technologies in a long-term perspective,” a source at LG Display said. “But we still think that QLED is a distant concept and not to be realized and commercialized for TVs as of now.”