LG Display unveils FLiPP, a next-generation OLED patterning technology without fine metal masks

LG Display develops FLiPP OLED patterning technology in-house

A turning point that could reshape the display industry

Technology draws on 22 years of large-screen OLED expertise

LG Display held an online tech seminar Thursday to introduce FLiPP, its in-house-developed next-generation OLED patterning technology. [LG Display]

"When we talk about technological innovation, we usually think of adding something new. But FLiPP took a slightly different approach — it started not by adding, but by removing the technical barriers that had been holding back OLED's potential."

Choi Young-seok, chief technology officer of LG Display, offered that explanation Thursday at an online tech seminar where he introduced the development background of FLiPP, the company's in-house-developed next-generation OLED patterning technology.

FLiPP, which LG Display spent more than a year developing, eliminates the fine metal mask (FMM) traditionally used to form red, green and blue (RGB) subpixels in OLED manufacturing, replacing it with a photolithography process. FMMs work by depositing organic materials through microscopic holes etched into thin metal sheets, but as substrates grow larger, the masks tend to sag and pixel alignment becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.

"Once we removed the constraint of the fine metal mask, new possibilities opened up," Choi said. "We were able to expand the area within each pixel that actually emits light, and scaling up in size and resolution became far more achievable. It also opened the door to greater flexibility and efficiency in production."

FLiPP raises the aperture ratio — the share of the total display area occupied by light-emitting pixels — to 65 percent, a 55 percent improvement over the 42 percent achieved with conventional FMM-based processes. That gain translates into concrete performance benefits: compared with FMM, FLiPP can deliver 1.6 times higher brightness, extend panel lifespan by 2.4 times, or cut power consumption by 13 percent.

LG Display Chief Technology Officer Choi Young-seok (center), Senior Vice President Cho Heung-ryeol (right) and Principal Engineer Kim Eung-yong (left) participate in the FLiPP online tech seminar. [LG Display]

A key strength of FLiPP is its ability to sharply boost productivity while making use of existing production infrastructure — an increasingly important advantage as the display market no longer grows at the explosive pace it once did. Rather than building new factories and expanding capacity, manufacturers are under pressure to maximize efficiency from the equipment they already have.

Because FLiPP uses eighth-generation mother glass without cutting it down, it yields a larger usable display area while remaining compatible with existing production lines. The technology can raise manufacturing efficiency with relatively modest investment, without requiring the construction of a new 8.6-generation production line.

Cho Heung-ryeol, senior vice president for next-generation display at LG Display, said the company plans to leverage existing equipment to deepen market penetration. "Conventional FMM-based processes and open metal mask processes differ in productivity by more than twofold," he said. "FLiPP aims to absorb the productivity advantages of the open metal mask approach."

Another notable feature is the technology's ability to produce OLED panels of widely varying sizes from a single sheet of mother glass. In theory, FLiPP can accommodate everything from smartwatch displays of around 1 inch to ultra-large televisions exceeding 100 inches on the same substrate, allowing manufacturers to adjust their product mix flexibly in response to customer demand rather than being locked into a specific size or category.

Chinese display makers have also been racing to develop OLED technologies that do away with FMMs — Visionox's ViP process is one prominent example. However, developing such a technology and achieving stable mass production on large substrates are two separate challenges. LG Display's success with FLiPP stems from the accumulated expertise it has built by manufacturing OLED panels for both televisions and smartphones.

"We have secured white OLED technology for large-screen TVs, RGB OLED technology for smartphones, and thin-film transistor technologies including oxide and low-temperature polycrystalline silicon," Choi said. "That allowed us to combine different manufacturing technologies in ways others cannot."

In practice, the most difficult challenge during FLiPP's development was achieving uniform quality across an approximately 2,200-by-2,500-millimeter glass substrate. Principal Engineer Kim Eung-yong said the team shortened the development timeline by applying OLED deposition technology and mass-production know-how drawn from existing white OLED production lines. "The white OLED mass-production expertise is also expected to be a major asset in achieving early gains in performance and yield going forward," he added.

LG Display plans to apply FLiPP first to OLED panels for IT devices such as laptops and monitors, then expand into other product categories based on customer demand. "FLiPP embodies a deep technical understanding of every aspect of OLED — materials, devices, processes and equipment," Choi said. "As the most advanced process innovation on eighth-generation substrates in existence today, it will serve as a technological moat that rival display makers will find daunting and difficult to cross."

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