Rollable color OLED prototype display

[Brian]

You may have seen an artist's futuristic renderings of flexible digital newspapers in movies like Minority Report. As more readers satisfy their appetite for text online while hitting the books less frequently, the need for foldable, rollable, flexible color displays is increasing with every passing day.

Flexible tablet-sized E-Ink displays are promising, and while their grayscale-only screens provide excellent readability for text, their slow refresh rates are not suitable for full motion video and other rich media content. With the help of some U.S. Department of Defense funding, Universal Display Corporation of Ewing, New Jersey, has created a prototype display that could allow for that futuristic digital newspaper to soon become a reality.

Universal Display showed off their rollable four inch diagonal full color active matrix OLED prototype display today at the United States Display Consortium's Fifth Annual Flexible Displays and Microelectronics Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. The display is only .04 inches thick and weighs in at .2 ounces, and runs full motion video using metal foil. According to the company, their display technology has the potential to "create exciting, new product possibilities" which include:

• Low-power, bright, colorful cell phones
• Full color, high-resolution, personal communicators
• Wrist-mounted, featherweight, rugged PDAs
• Wearable, form-fitting, electronic displays
• Full-color, high resolution, portable Internet devices and palm size computers
• High-contrast automotive instrument and windshield displays
• Heads-up instrumentation for aircraft and automobiles
• Automobile light systems without bulbs
• Flexible, lightweight, thin, durable, and highly efficient laptop screens
• Roll-up, electronic, daily-refreshable newspaper
• Ultra-lightweight, wall-size television monitor
• Office windows, walls and partitions that double as computer screens
• Color-changing lighting panels and light walls for home and office
• Low-cost organic lasers
• Computer-controlled, electronic shelf pricing for supermarkets and retail stores
• Smart goggles/helmets for scuba divers, motorcycle riders
• Medical test equipment
• Wide area, full-motion video camcorders
• Global positioning systems (GPS)
• Integrated computer displaying eyewear
• Rugged military portable communication devices

This new display technology could allow for some interesting new form factors, giving portable device designers the freedom to escape from their quandary. Universal Display hopes to use this display technology to develop their "Universal Communication Device", which they described as a pen-like device that would allow a user to unroll a thin, metal screen for visual and verbal communication.

Read the full press release here.

Related: As E Ink approaches the performance of newspaper

Source: The Inquirer via Gizmodo