LCDs that rival OLED? TCL CSOT starts mass production

TCL CSOT (TCL华星), one of China's largest display-panel makers, says it has begun mass-producing LCD panels on a faster oxide backplane, the layer of transistors that switches each pixel. The first product is an 18-inch high-refresh screen for gaming notebooks, the Shenzhen-based company said in a Nov. 11 announcement, reported by LEDinside (LED在线), in which it called the mass production a world first.

The gain is in electron mobility, how easily current moves through the transistor material. TCL CSOT puts the average for its "ultra-high-mobility 50" technology at 51.6 cm²/V·s. Conventional oxide, known as IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide), tops out around 10 cm²/V·s in mass production, according to OLED-Info. TCL CSOT says it developed its version with the team of Hideo Hosono (细野秀雄), a professor whose group at Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan invented the first amorphous IGZO transistors in 2004, OLED-Info says. Low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) reaches about 100, by OLED-Info's figures. TCL CSOT said in May that LTPS is costly and can't be used on Gen 8.5 or larger glass.

The company called the line only a Gen 8.6 "large-generation" line. Its website lists one Gen 8.6 oxide panel factory, t9, which Display Daily, a trade site, describes as an LCD line in Guangzhou for high-end IT and professional displays.

The launch completes a roadmap TCL CSOT set out in a May release, reported by 10jqka (同花顺): mass production of conventional IGZO in 2024, "high-mobility 30" in 2025 and "ultra-high-mobility 50" within 2026. It says the technology lets LCD compete with OLED in high-refresh notebooks and high-end monitors, citing LCD's low cost, long life and lack of burn-in. It hasn't named a customer for the 18-inch screen.

That pitch comes as TrendForce expects notebook-panel demand from major brands to fall more than 20% in the fourth quarter. Panel makers are also building Gen 8.6 OLED lines for notebooks and monitors, TrendForce said in an October 2025 report, including TCL CSOT's own t8 inkjet-printing plant.

The LCD pitch moves TCL CSOT’s cheaper technology into screen sizes it had lined up for OLED. In 2024, its chief executive, Jun Zhao, told Ian Lamont, now AsiaTech’s editor, in an interview for Economist Impact that customers were “focused on IT products, especially notebooks and monitors,” as the company promoted inkjet-printed OLED as a lower-cost way to make those screens. LCD, he said then, would keep “a dominant position in the market for large-size monitors,” because “cost is the most important factor.” The inkjet OLED plant, t8, is now expected to start production in the fourth quarter of 2027, Zhao said in July.

Editor: Ian Lamont