Successful collaboration

Universal Display Corporation and LG.Philips LCD have developed a flexible, full-colour, active-matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) display.

This prototype is a high-resolution AMOLED built on flexible metal foil using amorphous-Silicon (a-Si) backplane technology. Featuring crisp, full-colour video images, this 4" QVGA display combines a-Si backplane technology adapted to metal foil with high-efficiency PHOLED and FOLED flexible technologies.

This flexible metal foil prototype, with its thin, lightweight and rugged form factor, represents a step toward the demonstration of the commercial viability of such products.

This demonstration is also important in that it provides further evidence that highly-efficient PHOLED technology may enable the use of a-Si backplane technology for AMOLEDs. While many in the industry have focused on the value that poly-Silicon technology would bring to AMOLEDs, a much larger a-Si TFT manufacturing base and lower cost structure make a-Si technology an extremely attractive backplane option for AMOLEDs.

Glass-based OLEDs are increasingly being found in a variety of first-generation applications, including cell phones and MP3 players, and have also been showcased in a number of large-area TV prototypes.

One of the features of OLEDs is their ability to be built on a flexible substrate and used in a conformal or flexing format, creating a range of new display and lighting opportunities. These opportunities include new electronics products such as a wrist-based PDA and the Universal Communication Device, a portable communication tool with a rollable display screen.

Flexible metal foil offers a number of advantages that include enhanced thermal and mechanical durability, an important characteristic for high-temperature TFT processing, and potentially lower cost.

The display prototype is a portrait-configured, 4" QVGA, 100 ppi full-colour OLED display. The razor thin display was built on 76 micron thick metal foil (0.076 mm) and offers 256 grey scale levels per colour (8 bit). The display can portray a variety of images, including full-motion video.