Engineers Develop Flexible, Inorganic LED Display

By Clay Dillow Posted 08.21.2009 at 10:30 am 11 Comments

Flexible Inorganic LED Pacific Northwest National Lab via Ars Technica

The promise of OLED technology is that, unlike its inorganic counterpart, it can be used to create flexible and nearly transparent ultra-thin screens, opening up myriad possibilities for what we can do with displays and lighting. But just as market-ready OLED technology suffered a setback as Sony delayed its latest OLED television this week (only the world’s second commercial OLED TV, after Sony's XEL-1 set), engineers have devised a way to make cheaper, more efficient inorganic LED technology bend to their whims. Literally.

Just what scientific innovation brought us this flexible LED technology? Make the LEDs smaller. But that’s easier said than done. LEDs are very efficient at converting electric charge to light, so the eye can detect even extremely small LEDs; therefore, in theory, even a display in which only a small fraction of the surface is actually covered by the LEDs is still visible to the naked eye when it’s lit. A layer of microscopic LEDs embedded in a material should bend and flex as that material does, but their small size allows transparent materials to retain their transparency when the LEDs aren’t glowing.

However, the manufacturing processes that churn out the LEDs in our televisions and other displays can’t manufacture LEDs the size of individual pixels. So the engineers came up with a novel approach: manufacture one big LED, and then pare it down into the tiny elements needed to build a transparent, flexible display. The researchers created one large red LED atop a substrate then devised a way to etch a square grid into the LED, leaving behind squares just 50 micrometers across. The individual squares were then anchored together at two corners and the substrate holding them together was removed, leaving just the tiny square LEDs.

This tightly-packed LED grid, however, would lack transparency, so the engineers then crafted a simple process for removing certain subsets of the LEDs–every fourth square, let’s say–and printing that subset onto whatever surface they chose. Add some very small, flexible wiring to create a complete circuit, and viola, you’ve got a flexible, transparent LED display.

While the technology is by no means market-ready right away, the fact that the procedure works with established processes and materials means engineers should be able to develop the technology fairly quickly. Will it leapfrog more expensive, less energy efficient OLED tech? Probably not, but once manufacturing is scaled to mass produce flexible LEDs, it will immediately bring the price of flexible displays down, potentially bringing them to more applications faster than OLED could alone.

[via ArsTechnica]

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11 Comments

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seatellite

08/23/09 at 1:30 am

ok so... does that mean we will have a color kindle??? PLEASE?!?!

Also, does this mean we'll have "Roll Up" Screens? or devices that won't crack if they are in your pocket and you sit down at a funny angle?

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antic

08/23/09 at 9:23 am

A kindle uses electronic ink that reflects light from an external source such as a lamp or the sun. LEDs make their own light, which uses more energy and can be overwhelmed ("drowned out") by a brighter light source such as the sun.

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yuchao622

01/13/10 at 3:30 am

the new flexible LED display

soft LED display

soft LED display can be folded, curved and transformed, it can be applied any shape, like circle, arch, or even right-angle. Most importantly, it is light-weighted and easy installation, one square meter just weight about 5 kgs, and the whole system can be hung on the truss or on the building. And it can be expanded through connecting several pieces of soft LED display together to make a larger screen as you want.

the characteristic is as below,

1. SMD RGB 3-in-1LED, small, bright and colorful, can display clear and smooth image;
2. Soft and flexible, can be folded, curved and rolled like a paper, suitable for many shape application;
3. waterproof, fire retardant, durable, against dirty;
4. Small volume and light weight，easy installation and transportation;
5. Multipurpose function, suitable for various situation;
6. Easy connection and combination;
7. customized size and elegant shape.

more info:
Tel: 0086-18701325285
mail/MSN: soft-led@live.cn
skype: fisher201223

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simlitecraft@go...

09/16/10 at 4:47 am

Does technology include no scratch screens. I do enjoy smaller and more flexible, but long lasting is preferable. Thanks great article.

www.litecraftcommercial.co.uk

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John Christmas

09/30/10 at 4:12 am

Flexible screens, now I think this is brilliant, but has anyone see electronic newspaperr that can bend just like the traditional newspaper. What next?

john@ldj-lights.co.uk

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John Christmas

10/04/10 at 2:28 am

I must firstly apologise for the spelling erro and secondly add that the newspaper is a product of LG and will be available in color.

www.ldj-lights.co.uk

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ledsinolight

12/19/10 at 11:01 pm

we also provide flexible led screen, for outdoor and indoor, rental or sports.

http://www.led-display-screen.org

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designledtech

06/15/11 at 5:44 am

We supply indoor Flexible led screen with P6, P8, P10 ,3D led screens, lightweight led screen .

www.designledpro.com

angela@designledpro.com

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Arta Wing

09/21/11 at 3:17 pm

I like the part where he says LED.

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flexleddisplay

11/09/11 at 11:34 am

It's a fantastic job for new world creation and standard, I like the new science technology for the very small pitch size with clear image.

We now developed pitch 6mm, 10mm flexible led display with 3 different structures to fit different installations, pitch 10mm, 16mm and 20mm waterproof flexible led display are available.

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Cirrusled

04/06/12 at 3:29 am

It's gratifying to see your such a great information. We really impressed with your such a huge information. Thank you so much for your great information....

http://www.cirrusled.com