Laser Sharks

There is always that piece of technology that grabs your attention when it is first announced. It is usually something so amazing that you pass the time before it is released by envisioning all of the ways that it will change your life. You make a promise to yourself that you will buy one as soon as it is available, which should be sometime next year, right? Then you wait, wait, and wait a little more. Eventually you forget about the amazing little piece of tech heaven. After all, it has been about five years and besides, the next piece of revolutionary tech has already been announced.

From time to time, you think back about the tech that might have been.  Maybe it is closer to consumer release than you think. Maybe someone pulled an electric car and killed it. Maybe it is still in the works, but still has a decade or more worth of development before it can be released. It would be great to find out what’s up with this apparent vaporware. Laser Sharks is introducing its latest semi regular feature to its somewhat less than semi regular blog. The first topic - flexible displays.

What’s Update: Flexible Displays

The Vision
Flexible displays first hit future tech news circuits in 1996, where they were touted primarily for their ability to bring large screens to devices, such as cell phones, that don’t lend themselves well larger screens. The plan was to include displays that could simply roll up into the cell phone or PDA body that when fully extend could display resolutions similar to a desktop computer monitor. The dream of a roll up screen on a cell phone certainly has not died, but many current futurist have shifted their attention to miniature projectors as the way to bring larger screens to hand held devices.

While some flexible display experts focus on benefits to portable electronics, others focus more on the expressive side of things. ComputerWorld.com’s Robert Mitchell wrote in an article about flexible displays that “some displays may be embedded on a shirt sleeve or curve around a watchband.” Flexible displays have been considered for everything ranging from maps to wallpaper.

Followers of flexible display technology may still envision large roll up displays to give your cell phone a large screen or shirts that look like they belong in the Tubbytronic Superdome, the near term future most certainly hold a more utilitarian purpose - lightweight, ultra thin displays for mobile computing.

The Reality
Although flexible displays are currently nowhere near the dreams of the late 1990s, flexible display technology is starting pop up in a surprising number of places. Flexible displays are closely technologically tied to e-paper. E-paper was first developed in the 1970s, but has recently made its way into consumer electronics such as the Amazon Kindle and the Motorola M3 phone.

The Amazon Kindle

E-paper is advantageous among other reasons for its extremely low power consumption. It can even hold its displayed images when the power is off. If it is made with the right plastic substrate, it can be flexible.

 

Another piece of technology that is closely-intertwined with flexible displays that is currently available in the consumer marketplace is the OLED. OLEDs, or organic light emitting diodes, can be printed on flexible plastic substrates enable the display to bend. OLEDs, like e-paper, also use very little power, which would be critical in using large displays for small portable electronics. Although the screen is not flexible, Sony has commercially released the XEL-1, an OLED based display that is only 3 mm thick.

Sony’s 3mm XEL-1 OLED TV

 

Although Kindle and the XEL-1 feature technology that is closely tied to flexible displays, neither one of these devices are actually flexible. What is actually available today in flexible displays? Well, most of what is available are just tech demos and concepts. Nothing is actually available in the marketplace. However, there are some pretty impressive tech demos out there. For instance, Sony has developed the 2 inch full-color flexible display shown in the picture below.

Sure, it’s razor thin, but does it have the comfort of three razors?

Here is a video of the flexible display in action.

Here is a neat piece of tech that appears to be a flexible e-paper device

The Driving Force
The primary driving force behind flexible displays is to solve the need of humans to interface with electronics that are undergoing continuous miniaturization. Until the robots take over, humans will need ways of accessing and inputing data into our gadgets.

The secondary push for flexible displays is the desire to place computers in objects that they previously did not belong. This could be shirts, golf clubs, or watches. This is your Casio C-801 to the nth degree.

The Obstacles
The market for flexible displays is very hard to judge and some companies may not want to risk big money researching a new product that already has competitors based on an established technology (mini projectors). Flexible displays are very expensive to manufacture compared to current generation displays because new materials and processes have to be developed. Cost of manufacturing is certain to go down with time, however, the real challenge is figuring out how to best used flexible displays to interface humans with their devices

The Outlook
Flexible displays will almost certainly become a reality, but the time frame is debatable. Initially, expect to see more devices such as the Amazon Kindle or Sony XEL-1 OLED TV which do not have flexible displays, but feature related technologies. Also, a new generation of portable laptops and tablets should emerge with ultra-lightweight screens. Within the next five years, expect to see flexible displays that are at used in curved displays, but are held firm in static positions. Also around that time, expect displays in small objects, such as watches, that have traditionally been too small for computer monitor style screens. It will be ten years or more before wearable displays or frameless flexible display based e-paper is introduced.

The Final Word
Flexible displays will be here for the long term, but will be used more often in making rigid, small, and ultralight displays rather than allowing you to play your favorite Simpsons episode on your curtains or to sell dynamic ads on the back of your shirt.

 

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 8:51 pm and is filed under What's Update. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.