Japan Display has revealed that its much-vaunted eLEAP OLED technology is ready for mass production, and it will launch its first displays ahead of schedule. It’s aiming to deliver its first products by the end of the year, targeting laptops, smartphones and wearable devices initially. 

The eLEAP OLED technology is an alternative to regular RGB OLED, LG Display’s WRGB OLED and Samsung Display’s QD-OLED, and it has been created by Japan Display, which is a joint venture between Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi’s display panel-making business. 

The company first revealed eLEAP OLED back in May 2022, making some impressive claims such as its ability to deliver twice the peak brightness of other OLED variants, twice the efficiency and three-times longer lifespans. The key advantage of Japan Display’s eLEAP is its larger aperture ratio, which refers to how much of the space in each OLED pixel can be used to generate light. The larger the space devoted to producing light, the brighter the pixel will be. With conventional OLED displays, the aperture ratio is a mere 28%, but with eLEAP, Japan Display says it has expanded this to 60%. 

It's not clear how eLEAP stacks up to the most recent generation of OLED displays, however. 

The term eLEAP is an abbreviation of the tongue twisting technical verbiage “Environment positive, Lithography with maskless deposition, Extreme long life, low power, and high luminance, Any shape Patterning”. It’s the first OLED display that uses photolithography techniques for maskless deposition, which also contributes to the higher brightness and longer lifespan. 

The company promised to commence mass production of eLEAP displays in 2025, but today’s announcement indicates that it is well ahead of that original schedule. 

In a statement, Japan Display explained that it first began test production in October 2023 and is now ramping up for eLEAP mass production at its G6 fab in Mobara, Japan, by December 2024. “The production ramp is well ahead of plan: eight months ahead of launch, JDI has already achieved a production yield of over 60%, underscoring that JDI has successfully overcome the key technical hurdles for launch,” the company stated proudly. “JDI will supply eLEAP for use in a wide array of end-use applications, including smartwatches & wearables, smartphones, notebook PCs, and automotive displays.” 

The G6 fab in Japan is one of a couple that will ultimately start mass producing eLEAP OLED displays. Last year, Japan Display announced it had formed a strategic alliance with a Chinese display maker called HKC, in order to construct what it says would be “world-class eLeap fabs” in China. FlatPanels HD says HKC has since abandoned the project, but Japan Display plans to press on with what will be an 8.7 Generation plant when it comes online. The facility won’t be ready until 2027 at the earliest, but when it is up and running it will allow the company to manufacture much larger eLEAP OLED panels for TVs. 

Japan Display said one of its first eLEAP products will be a 14-inch display intended for laptops. It will be based on a “single-stack structure” and be able to hit a peak brightness of 1,600 nits. 

When using a tandem structure, eLEAP can achieve even higher brightness levels that exceed 3,000 nits, the company said. 

Japan Display has not yet announced any partnerships, so we will have to wait and see which brands choose to adopt the technology.