Kateeva, Newark, Calif., is expanding its headquarters by leasing an adjacent building at its Newark campus to facilitate production ramp-up of its Yieldjet inkjet printing manufacturing equipment for the global flat panel display industry. With the new building, Kateeva doubles its manufacturing footprint to 150,000 sq. ft., providing ample space to accelerate production.
Leading flat panel display manufacturers use Kateeva’s precision deposition equipment for cost-effective mass production of Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays. Already, OLED screens curve around edges to enable unique form factors. Soon, when tablets, notebooks and smartphones can bend, roll and even fold without breaking, it will be thanks to OLED technology. OLED technology enables the production of displays on plastic (entirely free of glass), making them flexible and paper-thin.
Kateeva’s first product, the Yieldjet Flex system, enabled a rapid transition from glass encapsulation to Thin Film Encapsulation (TFE) in new OLED production lines. The “freedom from glass” technology leap was the gateway to flexible displays.
Each Kateeva inkjet printer is highly customized and built to extremely exacting specifications. Measuring approximately 2000 sq. ft., the tool contains thousands of precision parts, and is differentiated by myriad innovations that are protected by 200 issued and pending patents. With the system, customers can achieve dramatically higher TFE yields and lower mass-production costs than what was previously possible with other deposition techniques. On an OLED mass-production line, Kateeva printers work in concert with tools from other leading equipment companies to process the panels.
Kateeva’s tools are designed and engineered in Newark, so the expansion will support the company’s growing R&D team. In addition, since Kateeva manufactures a majority of its products and components in Newark, the expansion will also support a large increase in its U.S. manufacturing capacity.
