Flat panel display glass: Current status and future

Abstract

Since the appearance of the Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display (AM-LCD) in 1995, flat panel display has been the fast growing industry during two decades [1]. Now LCD became the most dominant display technology world-wide. The flat panel display glass also has walked together along with the LCD industry. Great difficulties for manufacturing the flat panel display glass have given high entry barriers for the leading 3 companies: Corning, Asahi and NEG. These 3 companies occupy about 95% share of the flat panel display glass market [2]. However, these days, new players struggle to take significant part in the market. In this paper the detailed technological difficulties are analyzed.Display industry, however, these days in the turmoil of the big change. Plasma display panel (PDP) has not been displayed in the exhibitions or showcases. LCD is going through the mature stage of the industrial life cycle. Lots of ownership change and M&A have reported in the news. After that OLED and lots of touch application gadget appeared in the market. Even though these new devises also use flat glasses, the required attributes are different from those of LCD. The differentiation is important topic in the display industry. Flexible display is interesting theme in both glass and display field. Even though final product appears as a thin plastic display [3], all the manufacturing process happens on the glass substrates.In spite of the drastic change of the display industry, the glass production shows continuous growth. The need of larger screen does not show the saturation. The popularity of touchable hand held devices could continue in near future [4]. However all these situations are not the gospel for the glass industry. The display companies in the red ocean, push down the price of the glass with tremendous pressure. So in near future flat panel display glass also needs breakthrough for survival.