4.1-inch prototype demonstrated on video

May 26, 2010 08:49 GMT  ·  By

There have been quite a slew of futuristic technological concepts unveiled over the years, each competing in terms of both feasibility and absurdity. Still, every so often, a hardware developer will come forth and actually demonstrate a concept, which may not be too far from practical implementation. Sony's latest display technology seems to be one such case when a futuristic idea actually becomes implementable.

Sony basically demonstrated a rollable display. Though it was just a very small prototype (4.1 inches) and had a somewhat modest resolution of 432 x 240 pixels, the latest 80μm-thick organic TFT panel-based OLED (organic light emitting diode) screen can wrap around a cylinder with a diameter of at least 4mm. This is possible because the substrate of the display, measuring 20μm, is flexible and does not feature any built-in rigid driver IC chips, only Sony's organic thin-film transistors and OLED technology.

What is especially noteworthy about this invention is that, while obviously not in its final form, the display still has the ability to output 16M (16,777,216) colors and a brightness of over 100 nits. The contrast ratio, of 1,000:1, is also more than decent. Sony intends to first implement this solution into thin, lightweight and flexible mobile devices. Such gadgets will also benefit from a smaller environment footprint, as a result of the fact that the manufacturing process is shorter, cheaper and less energy-consuming.

Of course, such electronics aren't expected to debut any time soon, since the panel hasn't gone beyond the development stage yet. Still, Sony intends to make a formal demonstration on May 27, at "SID (Society for Information Display) 2010 International Symposium" in Seattle, Washington (May 23-28).

“Sony will continue to improve the performance and reliability of its flexible organic displays because the application of these developments are expected to yield thin, light-weight, durable and mobile devices with enhanced form-factor,” the company states.