Interview'AR will be killer app of AI,' Merck OLED head says

Johannes Canisius, general manager of Merck’s OLED business, poses during an interview with The Korea Times at Merck Korea's headquarters in southern Seoul, Aug. 12. Courtesy of Merck

The global tech industry is shifting its focus from advancing artificial intelligence (AI) models to maximizing their impact through real-world user applications.

Johannes Canisius, general manager of Merck’s organic light-emitting diode (OLED) business, predicted that augmented reality (AR) will emerge as the next “killer application” for AI, stressing that achieving this vision will require breakthrough materials and strategic collaborations within the electronics industry — an area where companies like Merck can play a pivotal role for Korean clients.

“We assume that AR will be one killer application to bring AI to a new level,” Canisius said during an interview with The Korea Times at Merck’s Korean headquarters in southern Seoul, Aug. 13. A killer application refers to software or hardware deemed necessary or desirable to proving the core value of a larger technology.

“The holy grail is a lightweight, simple pair of glasses that integrate the technology of smartphones. And to make this happen, you need lots of technological developments — the materials have to be lightweight, the materials of the computing power have to be advanced … The expertise of the semiconductor technology and the display technology are converging.”

Canisius visited Korea to deliver his keynote speech at the 25th International Meeting on Information Display (IMID) scheduled for Aug. 19 to 22 in Busan. During his stay in Korea, he will also engage with Merck’s key OLED customers, including LG Display and Samsung Display, as well as other partner material companies and university groups to assess the application of new display technologies across various devices.

During the interview, he stressed that the core goals of OLED material development are low voltage, low power consumption, high reliability, extended lifetime and minimized burn-in.

Burn-in occurs when OLED pixels display the same image for an extended period, causing afterimages on the screen, which is a critical concern for automotive and other advanced OLED displays.

A mock-up of deuterated OLED materials displayed at the company's booth at K-Display 2025, held from Aug. 7 to 9 at Coex, Seoul / Courtesy of Merck

To address this, Merck is introducing several new technologies for OLED materials, including “deuteration,” which replaces hydrogen atoms in OLED organic molecules with deuterium.

This process extends the material’s lifetime without compromising other properties, helping mitigate burn-in issues in OLEDs.

“Our customers are very interested in deuterated molecules because it enhances the lifetime significantly without affecting other parameters negatively,” Canisius said. “Deuteration is one important new technology which we introduce to our customer to improve the lifetime and enable new applications like IT and automotive, which are very important for the overall growth of the OLED market.”

Along with new OLED technology, he shared Merck’s new vision of integrating optical technology with semiconductors, following the company’s acquisition of Unity SC, a France-based company that uses optical technology to detect semiconductor defects.

“In the future, we cannot separate semiconductor technologies and optical technologies, we need to merge it together,” he said, adding that the merging of the two technologies — what Merck calls “optronics” — is crucial for achieving advanced AR.

Rokid smart glasses are seen at 2025 CES, held at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas, Jan. 5. EPA-Yonhap

He noted that wearing glasses equipped with many electronic functions is much more natural for human use than smartphones, so miniaturization is a key requirement for the electronic industry. It requires the continuous reduction of component sizes and the integration of multiple functions into smaller packages, enabling more powerful and efficient electronic devices through improving portability and usability.

“The display technology is already moving into this direction,” he said, citing key advances in display materials such as compact, high‑performance micro‑OLEDs and waveguide materials. A waveguide is a transparent optical structure that directs light from the display to the viewer’s eyes, superimposing it onto the real-world view.

Canisius noted that collaboration and partnership with partners, especially those in Korea, are essential to achieving these technologies.

“I think Korea is the perfect country where this kind of infrastructure of different companies and different knowhow is present from the semiconductor industry, the display industry and the optics industry,” he said.

“They are very good preconditions to develop killer applications … So the Korean industry has made over the last decade a huge development from simple new technologies to very advanced complex technologies. In partnerships with a very intense R&D landscape but also manufacturing landscape, Korea has a very solid, reliable and fully working supply chain, which is very important.”

Regarding Chinese display makers’ aggressive investments and capacity expansion, which are testing the OLED leadership of Korean companies, Canisius said Korean firms are similar to Merck in that they must focus on the future.

“China is very good in mature technology like LCD, or liquid crystal display, keeping the costs very low and scaling the production up,” he said. “But for new technologies in killer applications, I think Korea is very well positioned because you have excellent partnerships with companies like us who bring a lot of innovation.”

He stressed that a display is the most important interface between human and computer, and the next generation of display technology will involve integrating displays into everyday objects such as clothes, tables and paper. The goal, he said, is to integrate them to a level where it is impossible to tell whether a display is embedded, and OLED is the most promising technology to achieve that.

Johannes Canisius, general manager of Merck’s OLED business, speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at Merck Korea's headquarters in southern Seoul, Aug. 12. Courtesy of Merck

Canisius is set to deliver his keynote speech at the upcoming 2025 IMID, titled “Innovate and Terminate: Balancing Vision with Reality.” He said the speech will discuss several failures that Merck experienced before coming up with its innovative technologies.

“To develop breakthrough technologies, you have to be like a baby who is learning to walk through many failures,” he said, citing Merck’s unsuccessful attempt to develop printable semiconductors.

“But we learned from failures. For example, inkjet printing electronic materials, such as organic thin film transistors, which we studied for many years, now helps AR, because we are now printing so-called reactive mesogens for waveguide gratings as a future offering for smart AR-enabled glasses."