Kopin Corp has announced two agreements with two leading global OLED companies as part of its unique fab-less OLED manufacturing strategy for its silicon-based Lightning OLED displays introduced at CES in January 2017.
Kopin said they see continued market indicators of high demand of OLED micro-displays for both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) in the coming years and these new agreements represent important steps in preparing to meet both the near-term and long-term demands.
OLiGHTEK: Kopin signed an agreement with Yunnan OLiGHTEK Opto-electronics Technology (OLiGHTEK). The parties will jointly purchase an advanced production OLED deposition line to be installed within OLiGHTEK’s facility in order to augment OLiGHTEK’s existing capabilities. This OLED deposition line is expected to be ready for volume production by the end of 2017, enabling Kopin to meet the near-term customer demand for its consumer OLED micro-displays. Under the terms of the agreement, Kopin will be entitled to 50% of the new line output.
BOE: Kopin has also entered into a separate agreement with BOE Technology Group (BOE) and OLiGHTEK. The agreement will establish a high-volume, state of the art facility to manufacture OLED micro-displays to support the growing AR and VR markets. The new facility, is claimed by BOE, would be the world’s largest OLED-on-silicon manufacturing centre, will be managed by BOE and is expected to be built in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China.
Neither of these new agreements involves licensing of any Kopin technologies.
Dr. John C.C. Fan, Kopin’s President and CEO, said, "We have received extremely positive response to our Lightning OLED displays which have superb image quality, small size, fast frame-rate and low power consumption." John added, "We have a fab-less manufacturing model both for the back-end silicon wafer processing and the front-end OLED deposition for our Lightning OLED displays. This is a first in the OLED micro-display industry, and today’s announcements represent important elements of our fab-less model. Our partnership with OLiGHTEK will enable us to begin volume production of our Lightning OLED displays in late 2017. The agreement between BOE, OLiGHTEK and Kopin will provide industry leading capacity and quality of OLED micro-displays for the growing AR and VR markets when the facility is completed.2