The Flexible Displays Blog
Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) recently showed a full range of next-generation displays including a 7-inch color flexible active matrix (AM) LCD display, a 10.4-inch cholesteric LCD (Ch-LC) display and 10.4-inch bistable name card with a flexible Ch-LC display for meeting use during FPD Expo Taiwan 2007 (July 4-6) in Taipei, according to ITRI.
Pelikon Limited reports it has raised £3m of investment towards R&D.
London, UK, July 02, 2007 – Pelikon (www.pelikon.com), the Cardiff-based manufacturer of printed segmented electroluminescent (pSEL™) displays, today announced an investment of £3 million towards the R&D of its innovative flexible electroluminescent (EL) display technology, as it prepares to commercialise its award-winning hybrid displays.
Sony has demonstrated a 2.5inch, 0.3mm thick flexible full-color OLED display with resolution of 169×120.
Seoul, Korea ( May 17, 2007) - LG.Philips LCD [NYSE: LPL, KRX: 034220], a leading innovator of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) technology, announced today that it has developed the first full-color flexible active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) display that uses amorphous silicon (a-Si) technology. LG.Philips LCD developed this display in cooperation with Universal Display Corporation of the United States, which holds the original patents for Phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED) technology.
LG.Philips LCD’s 4-inch full-color flexible AMOLED display features 320 x 240 QVGA resolution and can reproduce 16.77 million colors. At an ultra thin 150 μm, this display is barely thicker than a human hair. It uses a stainless metal foil substrate to ensure durability and protection against heat, which improves the manufacturing process and enhances product stability.
“This display capitalizes on the strengths of OLED technology and its image quality is really something to behold,” said Hyunhe Ha, executive vice president and the head of the Small & Medium Displays Business Unit at LG.Philips LCD. “Although we are still in the initial stages with this technology, we expect to make some exciting advances in the near future. LG.Philips LCD is focused on customer-centered technology development to introduce products that customers want.”
OLED technology is recognized as an optimal technology for use in flexible displays. It allows LG.Philips LCD to develop a flexible display with improved durability and reliability while delivering full-color and high-resolution. Most importantly, using a-Si backplane technology allows LG.Philips LCD to use its existing TFT-LCD production line for these AMOLEDs, a major step toward demonstrating the commercial viability of such products. LG.Philips LCD is the first company to employ this technology.
LG.Philips LCD leads the industry in advanced flexible displays. In 2006 the company revealed a 14.1-inch monochrome E-paper display. This year it became the first company to introduce a color version in the same size.
LG.Philips LCD have demonstrated a 14.1-inch flexible color e-paper display.
Seoul, Korea (May 13, 2007) - LG.Philips LCD [NYSE: LPL, KRX: 034220], a leading innovator of thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) technology, announced today that it developed the world’s first 14.1-inch flexible color E-paper display, equivalent in size to an A4 sheet of paper. This is a second breakthrough in E-paper for LG.Philips LCD, which introduced the world’s first 14.1-inch black and white flexible E-paper display in May 2006.
The 14.1-inch flexible color E-paper uses electronic ink from E-Ink Corp. to produce a maximum of 4,096 colors. It can be viewed from a full 180 degrees, so that images always appear crisp, even when the display is bent.
Like the black and white flexible display, the color version uses a substrate that arranges Thin-Film Transistors (TFT) on metal foil rather than glass, allowing it to recover its original shape after being bent. This model includes a color filter coated onto the plastic substrate, allowing it to display color images.
LG.Philips LCD’s use of metal foil and plastic substrate rather than glass substrate makes the flexible color E-paper display bendable and durable while maintaining excellent display qualities.
To make this new display possible the company developed proprietary processing technology that minimizes panel deformation and prevents circuit structure change during high-temperature processes. LG.Philips LCD focused on the designs of the color filter structure and TFT, as well as color filter lamination technology. This allowed them to overcome processing difficulties inherent in the lack of heat resistance in metal foil and plastic substrates.
These displays are extremely energy efficient, only using power when the image changes. Additionally the displays are extremely thin, less than 300 micrometers(㎛). The images displayed are comparable in quality to printed pages.
“LG.Philips LCD is the first company to develop a flexible color E-paper display of this size.” said Mr. In-Jae Chung, the company’s Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President. “The potential applications for this display are incredible and will allow our customers to create new products that are not only convenient to use but also save natural resources. This represents the next generation in display technology.”
In October 2005 LG.Philips LCD unveiled the world’s first 10.1-inch flexible E-paper display. The company followed it up with its groundbreaking 14.1-inch model in May 2006.
Flexible Display Market Projection
According to a recent report from Displaybank, a Korea-based research firm specializing in the display industry, the flexible display market is projected to grow into a USD 5.9 billion market by 2010, rising to USD 12 billion by 2015.
E Ink has announced details of its latest imaging film.
Cambridge, Mass., May 9, 2007 - E Ink Corporation, the leading provider of electronic paper display (EPD) technology, today announced the launch of its next-generation electronic ink technology, offering significant improvements in performance and shipping under the new trade name VizplexTM Imaging Film.
"E Ink continues to be at the forefront of the electronic paper revolution. This is a major improvement because the electronic ink in the imaging film switches twice as fast and the image is 20 percent brighter," said Russ Wilcox, president and CEO of E Ink. "We gave it the distinctive Vizplex name so that everyone can easily recognize the next generation. Simultaneously, we are enhancing our whole solution with more screen sizes, improved electronics, support for more gray levels, and developer kits for prototyping."
According to DigiTimes, Prime View International are intending to roll out flexible e paper displays in mid 2007. The company will apparently showcase the technology at the SID conference in May.
According to a report in PC World, ITRI of Taiwan has opened a new flexible electronics pilot lab. The lab will apparently focus on developing “soft or flexible materials to be used in electronic devices, as well as manufacturing methods and products. So far, it has developed a new photolithography technique and three ink-jet and screen printing processes.”
Polymer Vision announce further news with details of a tie up with Telecom Italia to co-develop and market what they state is the “world’s first rollable display enabled personal device for digital content distribution”.
Rome - Eindhoven - February 5, 2007 - Telecom Italia and Polymer Vision today announced an agreement which will see the leading operator of the Italian mobile industry and the pioneers of the rollable display industry join to develop and launch the world’s first rollable display enabled mobile device to market in 2007.
The innovative terminal will be presented to the Industry as a world first at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona from February 12th (booth in Hall 2, D 06). The device uses the unique Polymer Vision rollable display technology which enables mobile devices to incorporate a display larger than the handset itself and offers a readability similar to printed paper. The product follows up on the rollable display technology based concept device Readius presented by Polymer Vision less than 18 months ago at the IFA Consumer Electronics Trade Fair in Berlin.
While smaller than a typical mobile phone, the new device features a display which extends up to 5-inches and may simply be stored away after use by folding it, thanks to the flexibility of the polymer based display material. The device features the largest display available in the industry for the same form factor, the 16 grey levels combined with a high contrast and high reflectivity display for paper like reading experience enables comfortable reading, even in bright sunlight. Future developments include colour and moving image capable display.
The rollable display enables reading entire newspapers as well as books that can be delivered and bought through TIM’s mobile network via a regular SIM Card within the device - and then stored in the terminal’s memory which will be extremely large (starting from 4 Gigabytes available in the first models).
Combined with TIM’s mobile services, the device will permit instant access to personalised data, e-mail, news, information feeds and location sensitive maps wherever and whenever. The always-on user experience is made possible through an optimised combination of cellular (EDGE/UMTS) and broadcast (DVB-H IP data-casting) mobile functionalities as well as a mini-USB slot for PC and wired/wireless broadband data connection.
Together with superior text and graphic content, the new device will also download and play music, audiobooks and audio podcasts. Featuring single-handed navigation and control via an innovative touch sensitive LED user interface, as well as intuitively simple software, users will enjoy a new unique experience in managing, accessing relevant and personalized high value content. With the extremely low power consumption of the display, the new device will deliver an exceptional 10 days of average usage time between battery charges.
Telecom Italia will exclusively market the innovative terminal in Italy.
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