Toshiba and Canon have decided to postpone their plans to invest in SED mass production, because of a patent infringement lawsuit they have made against a US company that provides SED technology to Toshiba. The original plan was to start producing in summer 2007, but they will delay the investment till the outcome of the lawsuit.
Toshiba's President Nishida cited the active matrix organic EL (electroluminescence) display as a potential successor to the SED. That is why Toshiba invests in the polycrystalline Si (p-Si) TFT line (at Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co., Ltd.), he added. However, "The technology has only become applicable to a 3- or 4-inch display and it is impossible to create a 40-inch organic EL display in 2 to 3 years. It is even difficult to achieve it in 2015 to 2016. We will pursue the SED until then, but management requires to consider about 10, 20 years ahead," Nishida said.
Sony, which has been positioning OLED and field emission display (FED) technologies for next-generation displays, has elected to focus on OLED and will spin out the FED R&D team as a separate company with the majority of investment coming from a "carve-out" fund.
Sony has been developing FED technology since the late 1990s. Sony allied with Candescent Technologies Corp. from 1998 to 2001. And after the termination of that partnership, Sony continued single-handed R&D. Its R&D team has completed a 20-inch prototype, according to a Sony spokesman.
LG.Philips LCD said yesterday that it has developed the world’s slimmest LCD panel for mobile phones at 1.3 millimeters thick, which it claims to be thinner than Samsung’s OLED. A few hours later, Samsung SDI refuted the claim in a press release, saying it already possesses 0.8-millimeter technology for OLED.
Samsung SDI, the global rival of LG.Philips in the small-size display market, played down the technology, saying its OLED products are much superior in quality than LG.Philips’ LCD panels.
Novel display technologies will complement LCDs, OLEDs, and plasma technologies at the 44th Society for Information Display Conference to be held in San Francisco, June 4 to 9.
One of the most intriguing new technologies is Liquavista, a spinoff from Philips launched in April, which is developing products using electrowetting technology for portable displays.
Advance Nanotech announced significant findings in a research project exploring new techniques for powering flexible displays. The project, a collaboration with the Center for Advanced Photonics and Electronics (CAPE) at the University of Cambridge, UK, aims to meet the critical need for the coming generations of flexible displays in folding PDAs, laptops and electronic paper by employing nano structured materials incorporating carbon nanotubes.
The recent growth in the portable display industry has been dominated by liquid crystal (LCD) and organic light emitting (OLED) displays. Critical to migrating these technologies to a flexible platform is the development of flexible transparent conductors.
NTERA and Seiko Epson today announced they have successfully produced working prototypes featuring the world's highest resolution naturally reflective electronic displays using NTERA's visualDNA(TM) brand electrochromic display technology. The prototypes feature 200 dpi and 400 dpi QVGA resolution and were produced using Epson's solution processable inkjet methods.
NTERA's technology reflects any ambient light, including bright sunlight, to make images always visible. It features ink-on-paper appearance at a fraction of the power consumption of existing electronic displays by eliminating backlights, a significant power drain in mobile devices. "Existing LCD and emerging OLED technologies fight the sun - we use it!" said Mr. Ritz.
A Japanese watchmaker said it had created the world's first flexible digital clock which is as thin as camera film and can be bent around the curve of a wall.
The clock is only three millimeters (0.12 inches) thick and offers better visibility from sharp angles and in poor visibility or high sunlight than existing models, Citizen Watch said Thursday. The clock, measuring 53 by 130 centimeters (21.2 by 52 inches), displays time in black numbers using technology developed by E Ink of the United States.
It consumes less power than conventional digital clocks, with its battery life 20 times longer. Citizen will start production of the clock early next year upon receiving orders with a price tag at 500,000-600,000 yen (4,200-5,000 dollars) each.
Plastic Logic announced today that it has developed the world's largest flexible organic active matrix display. The display consists of a flexible, high resolution, printed active-matrix backplane driving an electronic paper frontplane from US-based E Ink Corporation.
The display will be shown at the 12th International Displays Workshop in Takamatsu, Japan from December 6/9. Dr Seamus Burns, Plastic Logic's Group Leader for Displays, will give a presentation describing the new display in the Sunport Hall Takamatsu Main Hall on Wednesday 7 December 2005 at 09.50. The displays are 10" diagonal SVGA (600 by 800) with 100ppi resolution and 4 levels of greyscale. The thickness of the display when laminated with E-Ink Imaging Film(TM) is less than 0.4mm. The backplane substrate is made from low temperature PET supplied by DuPont Teijin Films which is more flexible and easier to handle than alternatives such as thin glass or steel foil.
Using plastic instead of glass substrates enables panel manufacturers to create bendable, flexible LCDs for mobile and consumer electronics applications. Samsung claims it has created the largest flexible display to date: The 7-inch prototype achieves VGA resolution.
On the performance side, the display 640 x 480 pixel resolution (VGA) at 114 ppi, which is in line with other types of bendable displays. The aperture ratio of the device is rated at 40 percent, the brightness at 100 nits and the color saturation at 60 percent. Samsung claims that the specs are sufficient to make plastic substrates a viable alternative to glass substrates even for digital TVs.
Flexibility is considered to be the next major step for LCD technology. Used already in Japan in the advertising industry, bendable screens are typically based on OLED variants. For example, Fujitsu recently announced an OLED-based "electronic paper," that includes non-volatile image memory, which can store and display a static color image without power supply.
