Japan Display, a joint venture between Sony, Toshiba, and Hitachi’s display panel divisions, has announced that its new eLEAP type of panels will enter production by the end of 2024. The company originally said mass production of the new displays was set to begin in 2025.
The eLEAP OLED variant was first revealed in May 2022 and promised lofty goals, including twice the peak brightness and three times the lifespan of OLED panels currently available. eLEAP is an acronym for “environment-positive Lithography with maskless deposition, Extreme long life, low power, and high luminance, Any shape Patterning.” It’s an OLED display manufactured without using the traditional metal mask. It retains the thinness and fast response of an OLED but with expanded light-emitting capabilities.
One of the main advantages that allows eLEAP panels to achieve this is its larger aperture ratio, Japan Display says. This refers to how much of each OLED pixel can be used to generate light. Typical OLED displays have an aperture ratio of around 28%, whereas eLEAP displays are said to offer up to 60%.
Japan Display will be able to produce much larger eLEAP OLED panels, potentially for TVs, once its 8.7 generation plant is in operation in 2027. The company has a 14-inch eLEAP OLED panel intended for laptops, which should be one of its first products in production. It can reach a peak brightness of 1600 nits and is based on a single-stack structure. However, Japan Display says that when using a tandem structure, eLEAP technology can exceed 3000 nits.
Japan Display hasn’t yet announced any partnerships with particular brands. We look forward to finding out where we may see this new OLED technology in use.
