Samsung is showing a new 46" transparent LCD display that is so efficient it can run from a small solar panel at ambient light. The panel supports Full-HD resolution (1080p) and offers ten-finger multitouch surface. Samsung plans to commercialize this technology 'soon':

Three weeks ago we announced that Polymertronics have a new flexible OLED science kit, and they offer £20 discount for OLED-Info readers. This offer lasts till March 15th, so there's still one week left to enjoy it. To claim the discount simply mention OLED-Info when you place your order.

Applied Materials announced a new system for LTPS deposition - used to make AMOLED and LCD displays. The AKT-20K PX PECVD system deposits highly-uniform films on 1.95m² glass sheets that are three times larger than the previous standard size. Applied says that these systems can be used to create 7" to 12" AMOLED displays and enable better resolution panels.

Applied says that they already shipped over 100 LTPS deposition systems worldwide and this new system is the result of 10 year of experience in LTPS technology and has already been shipped to major display manufacturers.

Last week we reported about LG Display's pilot 8-Gen OLED TV line, but we didn't have all the details (the original text was in Korean). Now we got a good translation and new info. According to the report, LGD has indeed begun to build the 8-Gen line and is currently installing equipment. Production is scheduled by the end of 2011. The OLED TV line is built in Paju in the same building as LG's 4.5-Gen fab that has started to manufacture AMOLEDs last month.

LG's 8-Gen line will produce 2,200 x 2,500 mm glass substrates which will be cut in two. The monthly capacity will be 24,000 substrates, or 72,000 55" OLED TV panels (although LG also plans to produce 31" panels later on). This of course assumes 100% yield - but the actual yield at first will be much lower.

Image Portal are selling their OLED related patents - which will be auctioned off at ICAP Ocean Tomo's Spring 2011 Live IP Auction on March 31, 2011 in New York City. Basically their invention is using several small OLED display tiles to create one large, seamless and continuous OLED display. This is achieved by making the edges of the tiles tilted at an angle and so the remaining portion is kept underneath the display area of an adjacent tile and is used for electrical connections.

Using smaller OLED tiles to create a large display is not a new idea (that's how Mitsubishi's Diamond Vision OLED screens work) - but here the company is describing a display in which you won't be able to see the seams between the display.

AUO now lists their first AMOLED product, a 3.5" display for mobile devices. The display features 360x640 resolution (0.12mm pixel pitch), 300 cd/m² brightness, 10,000:1 contrast ratio and MIPI/CPU /RGB interfaces.

AUO has been making AMOLED before, actually, in 2006 but stopped in 2008, and now they are building a new AMOLED fab - a Gen-3.5 line in Taiwan that will have a monthly capacity of 7,000 substrates. AUO is also converting its Gen-4.5 LTPS line in Singapore to AMOLED production (this will have a monthly capacity of 45,000 sheets).

Last month we reported about Samsung's new 4" active-matrix QLED display prototype, and now we hear that NanoPhotonica has developed new QLED technology (which they call S-QLED because it's solution-processable). Compared to current available OLED displays, S-QLED use fewer layers, is solution-processable (and can be produced using inkjet printing) and uses inorganic materials. In fact NanoPhotonica claims that S-QLED displays will be 75% cheaper than current OLEDs, be more efficient (by 30%) and will have double the lifetime.

NanoPhotonica is currently working with several display manufacturers to commercialize the displays. The company hopes to bring this to market "soon".

Update: the video was removed from the web

Yesterday we posted about the Fraunhofer Institute's bi-directional OLED microdisplay, and today we found a nice video showing it in action (in German). And here's a nice photo of Dr. Uwe Vogel, a business unit manager at the Fraunhofer Institute, showing a demo of this interesting device:

Update: here's a nice video (in German) showing the bidirectional OLED in action.

The Fraunhofer Institute announced their bidirectional OLED on CMOS microdisplay back in 2009. The idea is to have an OLED display and a camera on the same chip by integrating photodiodes between the OLED pixels. On March 22rd (at the Smart Systems Integration 2011 exhibition in Dresden, Germany) they will demo the system for the first time.

Fraunhofer's demo chip includes a monochrome AMOLED display (320x240) and a 160x120 monochrome camera. The brightness is 15,000 cd/m² and the chip size is 0.6" diagonal. They are also working on higher resolution displays (VGA and above) and small chip sizes (0.5").

Researchers from the Korea Advance Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) developed a new plastic-based film with glass fibers that is transparent, flexible and heat resistant. The heat expansion index (13ppm/oC) is similar to that of glass fiber (9ppm/oC) and so it can be used for displays (LCD and OLEDs) and solar cells at over 250oC.