LG Display has announced a new development for its OLED panel technology, called FLiPP – or FMM-Less innovative Pixel Patterning in short. This is a new OLED patterning method that eliminates the conventional fine metal mask (FMM) process used in OLED manufacturing, which helps reduce the gaps between each individual sub-pixel that should translate to better brightness.
FLiPP Improves Brightness, Lifespan, And Power Efficiency
FLiPP, which took a year’s worth of research, was unveiled by LG Display at the International Meeting on Information Display (IMID) 2026 in Busan, South Korea, where the company presented its products in dedicated exhibition hall last week.
Compared to panels produced using the FMM method under identical conditions, FLiPP increases brightness by 1.6 times, extends panel lifespan by 2.4 times, and reduces power consumption by 13%. LG Display attributes these improvements to a roughly 55% increase in aperture ratio (the proportion of a single pixel’s total area that allows light to pass through or emit light).
Another benefit of FLiPP technology is the manufacturing cost: LG Display said current FMM process requires new masks to be produced whenever panel size or resolution changes, which adds costs; the metal masks used in this process can also sag under their own weight on larger sizes, leading to misalignment and color-mixing defects. The FMM process also requires large mother glass substrates, such as 8.6th-generation or other 8th-generation substrates, to be divided into half-cut substrates due to the limited size of the masks.
While the FMM method evaporates RGB organic materials through small holes in metal plates, FLiPP coats RGB pixels in sequence, secures them in position, and uses photolithography – a UV light etching process commonly found in chipmaking – to remove unnecessary areas during pixel patterning.
Using its existing Tandem WOLED production infrastructure, LG Display has become the first display company to manufacture FMM-less OLED panels using 8.5th-generation mother glass as a single whole piece. Compared to producing OLED laptop panels of the same size using FMMs or other FMM-less methods requiring divided substrates, FLiPP delivers up to 64% higher mother glass utilization efficiency, reducing material waste and lowering manufacturing costs.
The company has filed trademark applications for FLiPP in South Korea and other key global markets, describing it as the world’s only FMM-less manufacturing process for 8.5th-generation OLED panels. The company stated it plans to combine FLiPP with RGB OLED technology to improve production flexibility and efficiency.
LG Display stated that FLiPP is not constrained by panel size or resolution, and can theoretically be used to produce displays ranging from 1 inch to 100 inches, including applications for VR and AR displays. The company plans to begin applying FLiPP to IT products such as tablets and monitors before expanding to other product categories, including wearable devices and large-format TVs.
Pokdepinion: Better and cheaper OLEDs, I’m all for it.
