Displays Flex Some Muscle
Advances in materials could breathe new life into the market for flexible display screens.
It’s been a big week for flexible displays – the long-sought-after
technology that could eventually lead to information devices that look
and feel more like paper. On November 30, Seiko announced it had
created a futuristic, curved digital watch, using technology introduced in the previous month by LG Philips and Cambridge, MA-based E Ink. Rather than the time displaying on a flat screen, the Seiko display is on the curvature of the bracelet.
Also
this week, Samsung Electronics announced it has created a flexible,
seven-inch color LCD screen – the largest to date. The product is not
yet available to consumers, and the company won’t say when a prototype
will be ready for market. But in an e-mail, Joe Virginia, a vice
president with the company, said “this has been one of our major
R&D projects and still is.”
Samsung’s announcement
comes at a critical time for the display market. As companies such as
Samsung and E Ink are making great strides, others are folding. For
instance, according to a representative of Ann Arbor, MI-based Gyricon,
a spin-off that wanted to commercialize electronic-paper technology
originally developed at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, the company
will be closing its doors on December 31.
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The concept of
a flexible computer screen has been a brass ring to engineers for at
least a decade. I remember visiting an IBM booth at a trade show in
1995, for instance, where engineers were displaying developments in
flexible screen technology. Yet basic problems, such as powering the
screens and finding a material that bends yet works as well as glass,
have kept it a small industry.
One reason, according to E
Ink, is that manufacturing flexible screens requires temperatures
higher than in typical manufacturing processes for display components.
The screen that E Ink and Philips introduced last month uses a very
thin stainless steel backing, which can withstand heat better than
plastics and some other materials. Since E Ink’s display technology is
reflective, rather than illuminated from behind like an LCD, its
backing materials can be opaque.
Samsung’s screen is
based on a thin-film transistor, liquid crystal display (TFT LCD), and
relies on a transparent plastic substrate that the company claims is
thinner, lighter, and more durable than standard glass-based LCD
panels. Using a proprietary new method, they were able to overcome the
heat sensitivity of plastic by significantly lowering the temperature
in the manufacturing process. The screen supports resolutions up to 640
by 480 pixels.
Along with devices
like the wrist-wrapping watch, other strong candidates for the
technology are e-books and electronic newspapers, where users could
download the latest novel or newspaper, slip it into their bags, and
read it on the go, without needing to carry around a laptop.
Such
flexible displays will “open up a new level of display applications,”
according to Samsung’s Virginia. As another application, he suggests
“it can be applied to wearable [display panels for] the fashion
industry. The most important factor is the mobility.”
Meanwhile,
other flexible screen centers are looking at larger-scale uses for the
technology. Xerox Research Center in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, is
experimenting with circuitry that will power flexible screens up to 10
meters long. Such giant displays could be used as billboards, roadside
signage, or sports-stadium scoreboards, according to the company. The
research center is working with Dow and Motorola to bring the
technology to market.
No one will be using foldable
screens in coffee shops and subways in the immediate future. But as
companies like Xerox bring the circuitry costs down and E Ink works on
materials issues, gains are being made in an industry with a product
that’s both practical and cool.
