Flexible display

A flexible display is an electronic visual display which is flexible in nature; as opposed to the more prevalent traditional flat screen displays used in most electronics devices. In recent years there has been a growing interest from numerous consumer electronics manufacturers to apply this display technology in e-readers, mobile phones and other consumer electronics. Flexible electronic paper (e-paper) based displays were the first flexible displays conceptualized and prototyped. Though this form of flexible displays has a long history and were attempted by many companies, it is only recently that this technology began to see commercial implementations slated for mass production to be used in consumer electronic devices. The concept of developing a flexible display was first put forth by Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Company). In 1974, Nicholas K. Sheridon, a PARC employee, made a major breakthrough in flexible display technology and produced the first flexible e-paper display. Dubbed Gyricon, this new display technology was designed to mimic the properties of paper, but married with the capacity to display dynamic digital images. Sheridon envisioned the advent of paperless offices and sought commercial applications for Gyricon. In 2003 Gyricon LLC was formed as a direct subsidiary of Xerox to commercialize the electronic paper technology developed at Xerox PARC. Gyricon LLC's operations were short lived and in December 2005 Xerox closed the subsidiary company in a move to focus on licensing the technology instead. In 2005, Arizona State University opened a 250,000 square foot facility dedicated to flexible display research named the ASU Flexible Display Center (FDC). ASU received $43.7 million from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) towards the development of this research facility in February 2004. A planned prototype device was slated for public demonstration later that year. However, the project met a series of delays. In December 2008, ASU in partnership with Hewlett Packard demonstrated a prototype flexible e-paper from the Flexible Display Center at the university. HP continued on with the research, and in 2010, showcased another demonstration. However, due to limitations in technology, HP stated ' doesn't actually see these panels being used in truly flexible or rollable displays, but instead sees them being used to simply make displays thinner and lighter.' Between 2004–2008, ASU developed its first small-scale flexible displays. Between 2008–2012, ARL committed to further sponsorship of ASU’s Flexible Display Center, which included an additional $50 million in research funding. Although the U.S. Army funds ASU’s development of the flexible display, the center’s focus is on commercial applications. This company develops and manufactures monochrome plastic flexible displays in various sizes based on its proprietary organic thin film transistor (OTFT) technology. They have also demonstrated their ability to produce colour displays with this technology, however they are currently not capable of manufacturing them on a large scale. The displays are manufactured in the company's purpose-built factory in Dresden, Germany, which was the first factory of its kind to be built – dedicated to the high volume manufacture of organic electronics. These flexible displays are cited as being 'unbreakable', because they are made completely of plastic and do not contain glass. They are also lighter and thinner than glass-based displays and low-power. Applications of this flexible display technology include signage, wristwatches and wearable devices as well as automotive and mobile devices. In 2004, a team led by Prof. Roel Vertegaal at Queen's University's Human Media Lab in Canada developed PaperWindows, the first prototype bendable paper computer and first Organic User Interface. Since full-colour, US Letter-sized displays were not available at the time, PaperWindows deployed a form of active projection mapping of computer windows on real paper documents that worked together as one computer through 3D tracking. At a lecture to the Gyricon and Human-Computer Interaction teams at Xerox PARC on 4 May 2007, Prof. Vertegaal publicly introduced the term Organic User Interface (OUI) as a means of describing the implications of non-flat display technologies on user interfaces of the future: paper computers, flexible form factors for computing devices, but also encompassing rigid display objects of any shape, with wrap-around, skin-like displays. The lecture was published a year later as part of a special issue on Organic User Interfaces in the Communications of the ACM. In May 2010, the Human Media Lab partnered with ASU's Flexible Display Center to produce PaperPhone, the first flexible smartphone with a flexible electrophoretic display. PaperPhone used bend gestures for navigating contents. Since then, the Human Media Lab has partnered with Plastic Logic and Intel to introduce the first flexible tablet PC and multi-display e-paper computer, PaperTab, at CES 2013, debuting the world's first actuated flexible smartphone prototype, MorePhone in April 2013. Since 2010 Sony Electronics, AU Optronics and LG Electronics have all expressed interest in developing flexible e-paper displays. However, only LG have formally announced plans for mass production of flexible e-paper displays.