New Samsung 0.05 mm OLED Panel "Flaps" in the Wind

As you've been able to see from our articles related to the subject of OLED panels published over time, organic light-emitting diode displays tend to get smaller and smaller, attaining levels of thickness never before thought possible. And this is also the case with the latest announcement from Samsung, regarding its "flapping" OLED display, which is actually so thin that it moves in the wind.

As Takuya Otani, from Nikkei Electronics (TechOn) informs us, this panel, which has been displayed at the FPD International 2008 show, is so thin that it can actually move whenever an air current is present, just like an ordinary piece of paper. Due to this rather unusual property, Samsung actually dubbed this device the "flapping" display.

The panel provides a 480 x 272 pixel resolution, as well as a 100,000:1 contrast ratio, while the brightness level is of around 200cd/m2. The color reproduction range is 100% of the NTSC standard. This makes it quite OK to use for various purposes, whether we're talking about smaller or wider displays.

In order to be able to attain such a small thickness, Samsung etched an OLED panel that uses a normal glass substrate, with the actual drive circuit being formed by low-temperature polysilicon TFTs and low-molecular organic EL materials. Since glass would have been way too thick, the engineers from Samsung chose a membrane sealing technology, using a sputtering method. For this reason, the 0.05mm thickness is almost the same as that of the drive circuit board.

It's quite obvious that this revolutionary display opens up a whole world of possibilities, ranging from fully-electronic newspapers to, let's say, rollable displays for various portable devices. Of course, it remains to be seen just how soon this thing will go into mass production, but it's not likely to be in the very near future.


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