Samsung working on rollable TVs with new and improved QD-OLED panels, industry sources hint

Samsung has a new project underway for its future TV offerings. The project aims at making its quantum dot (QD)-OLED panels thinner than they are at present. With this, the company will be eyeing a new possibility for its TV lineup - rollable screen TVs.

A new report sheds light on the development, claiming that the South Korean tech major is already working on thinner QD-OLED panels. It mentions that Samsung plans to achieve this by reducing the use of glass substrates within the panels. While the current QD-OLED screens use two substrates, the target will be to cut this down to one.

The information has been shared by sources within the industry, as cited in a report by TheElec. The sources specifically mention that Samsung's attempts at making the new display panel, if fruitful, will lead to a new line of QD-OLED TVs that will be rollable in nature, pushing the boundaries of high-quality displays as known to us.

At present, the QD-OLED panel that Samsung sells commercially uses two glass substrates - one for the thin-film transistor (TFT) and another for the QD colour conversion layer. In production since late last year, the panel also houses anode, emission layer, cathode, blue OLED encapsulation, filter, QD colour conversion layer encapsulation, and QD colour conversion layer, other than the substrates, as mentioned in the report.

Now Samsung wants to remove the QD colour conversion layer glass substrate at the top. Instead, the company is trying to use inkjet printing on top of the blue OLED encapsulation. The printing will be done before the QD colour conversion encapsulation process is carried out on top of it. By doing so, the company will not be able to go for a rollable screen but also bring down the materials costs on its regular QD-OLED panels.

QD-OLED panels are the likely go-to technologies for Samsung and Sony TVs lined up for a launch this year. The technology is meant to enhance OLED displays with deeper, brighter, and more vibrant colours. However, as highlighted by the sources in TheElec report, the production process for QD-OLED panels is complicated as of now. Samsung's pursuit of a rollable QD-OLED may also lead to a much-needed simplification of this task. For this, the sources even mention that Samsung Display may remove more than just the QD colour conversion layer glass substrate if it is possible