Samsung has officially launched their YOUM flexible OLED technology. While the YOUM brand was shown back in April 2012, it is now officially the name of Samsung's plastic-based flexible OLED panel products. The company didn't reveal any new technical details, nor did they say when they'll start shipping products based on those panels (or ship panels to other customers) - but it seems that they are getting closer and closer to mass production. Personally I think we'll still have to wait a year (at least) for them to overcome all technical issues with production.
While we don't have any interesting facts to tell here, we do have some cool videos - showing a bendable panel and also devices that use curved YOUM displays. One of those devices (shown below) has a 5" curved YOUM panel.
Obviously such curved but rigid displays are closer to production that truly bendable panels. The YOUM brand logo indeed hints at possible curved displays, this is quite clever:
Originally Samsung planned to release YOUM OLEDs in 2012, but this was pushed back to 2013. As I said before, I'm not entirely sure Samsung will actually be able to mass produce such displays in 2013.
Samsung's flexible AMOLEDs will be fabricated on a plastic (Polyimide) substrate and will be able to withstand high temperature (up to 350-400 degrees). The displays can be bendable - and rolled down to a two centimeter radius. Back in May 2011 Samsung announced a joint venture with Japan's Ube Kosan to develop and produce polyimide resin - to be used as substrates for their flexible displays in a $18 million investment.
Apparently Samsung is not using FMM in YOUM displays. Instead they are using LITI to pattern the red and green materials while thermal deposition with no patterning will be used for the blue material. This enables SMD to achieve over 300 ppi.
