Hummink Aims to Boost Display Yield
A French start-up company, Hummink, has raised $20 million in funding to develop a method it calls High-Precision Capillary Printing (HPCaP) that it describes as being ‘like the world’s smallest fountain pen, writing at the nanoscopic level with a controlled flow of material’. The technology is expected to be used to repair defects in displays, with its first use case in OLEDs. The firm says its technique can ‘correct most of these defects’.
Why is this important for 8K? One of the challenges in making 8K OLEDs is the complexity of the backplanes, which means that a tiny level of defects can cause panels to be discarded. The low yield contributes to the high cost so anything that improves yields will help OLED to be competitive with LCDs. For LCD makers, defects can lead to more challenges in making larger displays, so the technology could also help them.
