Can you imagine watching a movie on a flexible screen that you could roll away once you're done with it? LG Display, the world's leading innovator of display technologies, may have managed to create a new screen that's capable of doing just that.
LG Display has developed an 18-inch (45cm) flexible display that can be rolled into the shape of a thin cylinder, a step toward making a large display for flexible TVs. The new, rollable display is created with high molecular substance-based polyimide film. This allows the screen to manage to flex into a roll and also helps reduce its thickness.
This screen may be flexible, but can it still show a clear picture? The flexible OLED panel has a high-definition class resolution of 1200x810 with almost one million megapixels. The panel can be rolled up to a radius of a mere 3 cm without affecting the function of the display. In fact, this shows that LG Display can bring rollable TVs of more than 50 inches to the market in the future.
South Korean display makers are striving to gain an edge in flexible display technology as they see it as a way to set their products apart from their rivals in China, Taiwan and Japan. They also hope that the novel form would give consumers a reason to buy a new gadget.
Last year, Samsung and LG each released a smartphone with a curved display to show off their technological prowess.
But it is unclear how the nascent technology would make handsets or televisions more useful. LG said its technology would make large TVs portable and it is up to the TV makers how they expand the use of the technology.
"LG Display pioneered the OLED TV market and is now leading the next-generation applied OLED technology," said In-Byung Kang, Senior Vice President and Head of the R&D Center at LG Display, in a news release. "We are confident that by 2017, we will successfully develop an Ultra HD flexible and transparent OLED panel of more than 60 inches, which will have transmittance of more than 40 percent and a curvature radius of 100R, thereby leading the future display market."
