Rollable TVs

An LG Display employee is rolling up an 18 in. flexible OLED display with a 30R radius of curvature that could be used for a rolled-up TV.
An LG Display employee is rolling up an 18 in. flexible OLED display with a 30R radius of curvature that could be used for a rolled-up TV.

 

A rollable TV, just like paper, will be available soon.

LG Display announced that they have developed transparent 18 in. flexible OLED technology. Two technologies were introduced at the “national projects of transparent flexible display development workshop” held on July 10 and 11.

The development of flexible and transparent OLED displays is very significant in that large-sized transparent flexible screens can now be further developed. These are the first two technologies that could actually commercialize rolled TVs or window TVs that have appeared in science fiction movies like Minority Report, Avatar, and Back to the Future II.

The flexible OLEDs developed by LG Display are the largest OLEDs in the world now at 18 inches and HD quality resolution (1200x810 pixels). The maximum OLED size before this was 6 inches. The maximum radius of curvature is 30R, or a 30 mm radius circle, meaning that rolling the screen into a circle is physically possible without harming the display. An official at LG Display explained, “Overcoming the 10-inch limit was the biggest task in the OLED industry. As we succeeded in developing 18-inch OLEDs, a rollable TV bigger than 50 inches will be feasible in the near future.”

LG Display emphasized that they minimized the thickness and greatly enhanced the flexibility by using polyimide film, a high molecular substance, on thin film transistor (TFT) circuits so that they could realize the maximum radius of curvature for the 18-inch screen.

LG Display was also successful in developing transparent OLEDs with the same size and resolution as flexible LEDs. More than 30 percent transparency has been realized in this transparent OLED with LG Display’s own transparent resolution design technology. This is remarkable progress, as the transparency of current LCD-based transparent displays is about 10 percent.

LG Display perfected these transparent displays by drastically lowering the haziness caused by circuit elements and films to 2 percent.

Transparent flexible displays (TFDs) are a national project of developing leading technologies for future businesses to create new markets, led by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Korea Evaluation of Industrial Technology. A total of 36 business and academic institutions participated in this joint research. This project aims to develop 60-inch transparent and flexible displays by 2017.

Kang In-byung, senior vice president of LG Display R&D Center, who manages the overall processes of the national project, confidently said, “There are many challenging tasks left, but we will succeed in developing transparent flexible displays bigger than 60 inches with UHD quality resolution, transparency higher than 40 percent and 100R radius of curvature.”

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