Wearable OLEDs - Introduction and Latest Industry News - Page 32

Mexican design studio Agent has designed a couple of OLED lighting concepts for Konica-Minolta. The first one is called Wearable band of light - 'cool, wrap-on accessories that glow with light and can be worn around your body, matching your personality". The bands are bendable, thin, light and can be curved any way you like. Agent says this is a hybrid of jewelry + safety element + wearable light.

The second design is called Strip Light - a bus stop with illuminated timetables and neighborhood maps. This design also uses flexible OLED panels.

ASUS is showing off its new Waveface family of concept devices. Two of these use flexible OLEDs. The Ultra is a wearable (on the wrist) mobile phone that is controlled with hand gestures or by touching the display.

ASUS Waveface Ultra

The Waveface Light has physical keyboard that pops up when folded up into the laptop form factor.

UPDATE: it turns out that this is not an OLED dress at all! It is using EL panels, made by Elumin8 back in 2005. Here's more information...

UK's PolyPhotonix is showing an 'OLED Dress', designed by Gareth Pugh. The dress was exhibited at the launch of the UK's "Plastic Electronics Strategy' (the $32 million investment in plastic-electronics announced in July). The UK announced that by September 2010, they will begin prototype production of flexible OLED Lighting panels and low-cost long-life solar cells.

PolyPhotonix OLED dress

PolyPhotonix are working toward polymer-based OLED Lighting panels. Their first production line is already active (that's where they made the OLED panels for the dress).

UPDATE: We have some new photos from Engadget (who's got a video, too).

Rohm is showing a new wristband with an OLED display. Their idea is that OLEDs can actually be used in jewelry or a watch band. OLEDs are expensive, but so are jewelry pieces so they think that it might be a good usage for the technology. The OLED in the wristband is 0.3mm thick, and run via a small lithium-ion battery.

Rohm is also showing OLED table lights (one inch wide, 4 inches tall). One of their OLED lamp prototypes consumes about 300 milliwatts.

EEtimes says that GE will start volume production of flexible OLED light panels in 2010. GE will print the OLEDs on polymer substrate, and use their ultra-high barrier coating. GE says that they managed to lower production cost by using roll-to-roll printing, and inexpensive substrates (the polymer ones).

GE are also thinking about possible new designs, and have released this video a month ago, which includes several flexible OLED light designs by art students, including wearable OLEDs for emergency safety gear, illuminated stairs, walls and signs in stores and a nice "wall peel" OLED lamp.

UDC and LG has been showing a wrist-worn flexible OLED prototype for a long time now. They have released some new information on the display today.

The display is 4", supporting 320x240 pixels at 100ppi. The luminance is 100cd/m2, contrast 1,000:1. The whole panel is 0.3mm thick, with a steel plate as substrate, using amorphous Si TFT. It weights 8g. 

GE has produced a nice video showing all sorts of design concepts using thin, flexible OLED lighting panels. There's wearable OLEDs for emergency safety gear, illuminated stairs, walls and signs in stores and a nice "wall peel" OLED lamp:

GE are working towards roll-to-roll printing of OLEDs, and are planning to introduce OLED lighting products by 2010.

UDC announced that it got a $1,089,600 new contract (SBIR III) from the United States Army to continue and develop the Flexible OLED display tech. The wrist-worn 4" OLED device has been shown at CES earlier this month.

UDC Flexible OLED Display Prototype

The program is extended for 15 months, and will focus on demonstrating advances in display performance, including higher display
brightness and enhanced reliability, as well as improved product design
(i.e., a thinner, lighter weight and more compact system housing). During this time they will also put actual prototypes in the field for soldiers to test.

The OLED materials are from UDC, while the backpane is amorphous Siliocn (a-Si) TFT backpane made by LG. The wrist-worn device was designed by L-3 Display Systems.

Sony is showing a rather nice concept of a flexible-oled based walkman called 'Contrast'. The whole device is flexible, which allows for physical bending which is the control interface.

Universal Display Corporation today announced that it will exhibit a novel, wrist-worn flexible OLED communication device prototype at a CES 2009 event. The prototype device, based on a four-inch flexible OLED display, was initially developed for military use through a program sponsored by the U.S. Army Communication Electronics Research and Development Engineering Center (CERDEC). Universal Display fabricated this prototype in collaboration with LG Display and L-3 Display Systems, as a complement to the flexible display development work ongoing at the U.S. Army’s Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University, of which Universal Display is a founding member.