- LG's FLiPP tech could deliver Tandem OLED performance for much less
- Will arrive on smaller displays first, don't expect it on TVs for several years
- Production for laptop and monitor screens could start in 2027
If you're a fan of OLED, there's an exciting new acronym you need to know: FLiPP. It stands for FMM-Less innovative Pixel Patterning, and the FMM bit refers to fine metal masks. Those are normally used in OLED manufacturing to precisely place the organic emissive materials.
With FLiPP, there's no mask. Instead, the materials are deposited across the glass, given a protective layer and then refined using photolithography and etching to get rid of the unwanted sections.
The biggest single advantage to FLiPP is efficiency. According to trade site The Elec, LG Display found that the tech increased the utilization rate – the efficiency of the production – from 75% in a conventional FMM process to over 93% in a FLiPP process.
That's good news for us, because more efficient production means lower production costs. And that ultimately means we could see much better OLEDs without higher prices.
FLiPP also improved utilization of the organic emissive materials from 40% to 74%, boosted the pixel aperture ratio (how much of the pixel area emits light) to 65%, and enabled the light-emitting area to boost luminance by 1.6x, longevity by 2.4x or reduce power consumption by 13%.
So that means these OLED screens can brighter, or they can be more reliable, or they can use less power, depending on the preference of the device. But in the near future, those devices will almost certainly be laptops and monitors, and not TVs — sadly for those desperate for the price of the best OLED TVs to drop.
What the FLiPP?
LG Display's Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Choi Young-seok says that the technology is still in the first development stage. The next stage would be developing actual products, and the third stage is mass production.
That third stage will initially concentrate on the monitor market where displays are smaller — the improved efficiency figures mentioned above were for 23.5-inch panels — but laptops are apparently on the cards as well. LG Display has said it expects to reach this point by late 2027 — so the first products might appear at CES 2028.
According to Cho Heung-ryeol, who is the head of the Next-Generation Display Division, LG Display is currently evaluating its existing LCD and WOLED production lines to see if they can be reused without major modifications, or if new plant would need to be purchased. The former option is of course the preferred one. Either way, LG Display still plans for production to start in around a year.
If you'd like to know more about the technical side of FLiPP and how it compares to other OLED manufacturing processes, The Elec has published a transcript of LG Display's online seminar and you can read it here.