Sony published an interesting interview with their display unit team about rollable OLED displays. Back in May (during SID 2010) Sony unveiled a new 4.1" rollable OLED display (with 423x240 resolution at 121ppi, 16.8 million colors - and the whole thing is just 80um thick). In the interview, Dr. Kazumasa Nomoto reveals that Sony's end target is a rollable large-screen OLED TV: "The time will come when the very idea that an enormous black box (TV) was ever placed in rooms will seem strange."
In the interview, the team discusses the new technologies that Sony created for this new display. First was a new Organic TFT based on a new material: a peri-
Xanthenoxanthene (PXX) derivative (this took Sony 5 years to develop!). Sony also developed a flexible gate driver circuit. Finally, an insulating layer for the O-TFT and OLED materials using flexible organic materials. Those three technologies enabled sony to create a rollable video display.
Sony says that the new materials are easily dissolved in a solvent and it will be possible to develop an ink-jet printing process to create such displays on the cheap. They also assure us that they keep working to improve the performance and reliability of their organic materials and devices.
It seems that Sony is still into OLEDs - which some people doubted after they stopped producing the XEL-1 TV back in February 2010. Lately, Sony also hired Professor Ei-ichi Negishi to advise on Organic electronics.
