New, Cheap Display Technology in Works
July 13 -- Imagine reading ABCNEWS.com on a paper-thin, flexible sheet of plastic at the breakfast table.
That’s one of the promises of light-emitting polymer technology, a system developed by scientists in Cambridge, England that might be the next revolution in mobile phone and computer displays.
Organic light-emitting devices such as LEPs and their cousins, small-molecule displays, are “probably one of the most exciting display technologies to come along in a number of years,” said Chris Chinnock, senior editor of Microdisplay Report, a monthly magazine focusing on small-scale display technology.
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Compared to current display devices, LEPs are simpler, cheaper and better, said Daniel McCaughan, president of Cambridge Display Technologies, which holds most of the patents on LEP technology. CDT is now working with licensees such as Japan’s Seiko-Epson, one of the world’s top printer makers, and electronic giant Philips, based in the Netherlands, to produce commercial LEP displays.
Currently, the majority of computer laptops use liquid crystal displays. LCDs are passive, complex, multilayered constructions with crystal molecules that redirect reflected light and pass it through a polarizing layer, which either blocks or passes through the light to a viewer’s eye.
As they emit no light of their own, LCDs require power-hungry backlights to pump light through the crystals. And if you tilt an LCD, colors shift and change because you’re looking at bent light from a different angle.
The basic technology involves molecules of plastic, called polymers, that glow when hit with electricity. An LEP screen is just two layers of polymer sandwiched between electrically charged plates and applied to a substrate, such as glass or plastic.
Unlike with liquid crystals, the polymers don’t need to be on a glass panel. And since they emit their own light, they don’t change color when tilted as LCD displays do.
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