Samsung hosted an investors forum in NY a few days ago, and it is reported that much of Samsung's focus was on OLED technologies. As we already reported, Samsung Electronics announced that flexible OLED is one of its 3 areas of future growth (especially as they struggle to increase high-end mobile phone sales), and during the conference the company revealed some interesting information and prototypes.
Foldable OLED concept (2013)
So first up were two new foldable OLED prototypes - a 5.5" (WQXGA, 2048x1526, 464 PPI) panel that folds in half and a 10" tri-foldable AMOLED (Full-HD, 218 PPI).
Both prototypes have a radius of curvature of 5 mm, better than the Galaxy Note Edge that has a curvature of 7 mm, and a huge improvement over earlier flexible OLEDs - the Galaxy Round's 400 mm and the Gear Fit's 57 mm. SDC goal is to reach a radius of 1 mm, and they aim to achieve that within two years.
Those displays are all plastic expect the TFT subtrate (LTPS still, probably). SDC says that those displays are about 0.8 mm thick (0.5mm for the cover layer,0.1-0.2 mm to the touch layer and 0.1 mm to the display layer).
The displays use a Polyimide substrate, but SDC revealed that it is also looking at flexible glass substrates. The touch layer currently uses ITO, but they are looking at alternatives (Metal Mesh, Nanowire or Carbon polymers).
But it's not all about flexible OLEDs. Samsung says that regular small-sized OLEDs can be made cheaper than LCDs as OLEDs do not require backlighting, color filters and polarizers, and the technology is now ready to compete head to head with LCD technology.
SDC is also showing transparent OLED prototypes, one 30" panel that is the world's largest transparent OLED ever on display (surpassing LG Display's 18" one shown in July) and a smaller 14" (Samsung showed a 14" transparent OLED laptop prototype back in 2010, but never produced any commercial transparent OLEDs). These displays will probably find the first market in consumer signage, but Samsung did not detail any plans to commercialize these displays.
