[Breaking] Hanwha Solutions Enters OLED Material Market... Acquires DoubleUOS for 60 Billion Won

Acquisition of Domestic Company with FMM Technology
Plan to Establish FMM Mass Production System in 2022

[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Yoon-joo] Hanwha Solutions is entering the OLED materials market. By acquiring a domestic OLED company, the company plans to accelerate its ongoing efforts to add high value to chemical and electronic materials.

On the 29th, Hanwha Solutions held a board meeting and announced that it decided to acquire 100% of the shares of WOS, which holds technology related to FMM (Fine Metal Mask), a core material for OLED panel manufacturing, for 60 billion KRW.

WOS is a company established through a physical division of the OLED business unit of Wave Electronics, a KOSDAQ-listed company, in May. It began developing FMM technology in 2010 and has now completed the development of a new electroforming technology, but due to difficulties in securing funding, it has not actively invested in mass production. Hanwha Solutions plans to utilize the production capabilities accumulated through its mobile electronic materials business to establish an FMM mass production system by 2022 and make additional investments worth several hundred billion KRW.

As part of its strategy to add high value to its materials business, the company has successively developed high-value chemical materials such as XDI (optical lens materials) and EcoDechi (eco-friendly plasticizers), and in April, it recruited Hwang Jung-wook, former head of Samsung Electronics’ Future Strategy Business Division (President), to develop high-value electronic materials.

President Hwang Jung-wook said, "This acquisition lays the foundation for entering the OLED market, which is expected to experience high growth," adding, "The know-how accumulated over more than 10 years of supplying mobile circuit materials to global electronics companies can be applied to FMM mass production in the future."

FMM is a core component required in the OLED panel manufacturing process. It is an ultra-thin metal plate with tens of millions of ultra-fine holes at the micron (㎛) scale densely perforated. OLED creates images through electrical reactions of red, green, and blue (RGB) organic materials stacked in multiple layers on a substrate, and FMM helps these RGB organic materials to be precisely deposited on the substrate during the OLED production process.

The FMM technology owned by WOS is evaluated to be advantageous for realizing ultra-high-definition screens compared to Japanese companies that currently monopolize the market. While Japanese companies use an etching method that patterns the metal plate by flowing chemicals, WOS uses an electroforming method that patterns by passing electricity through a metallic solution. The thinner the FMM, the higher the density of RGB organic materials that can be stacked, and the electroforming method can make the substrate more than 50% thinner than the etching method.

Currently, Japanese companies hold over 90% of the global FMM market share. Domestic display companies also import all FMMs required for panel manufacturing from Japan. Since the Japanese government began export restrictions on key parts and materials to Korea in 2019, there have been continuous calls within the domestic display industry to localize FMM production early.

According to market research firm UBI Research, the FMM market is growing at an average annual rate of 10% due to increased sales of smartphones, tablet PCs, and smartwatches equipped with OLED. In particular, as global IT companies recently expand the application of OLED panels in their products, there is analysis that the FMM market will grow even faster in the future.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.