How would you like to fold a screenful of AVN.com or your favorite downloaded newspaper and put it away as you would a hardcopy edition? According to Royal Philips Electronics, you'll be able to during 2005, when the Dutch-based giant says it will have a version ready to go.
Saying they've spent "years of groundbreaking work" on so-called polymer electronics, or Polymer Vision, Philips announced January 26 that they were ready to produce prototypes of these "ultra-thin, large-area, rollable displays" with an aim at fast movement toward production models.
"Lightweight, large-area displays that are unbreakable and can be rolled up into a small-sized housing when not actively used, are particularly attractive for mobile applications," the company said in a formal announcement. "Ultimately, large-area displays could become feasible, which are so flexible that they can be integrated into everyday objects like a pen. The availability of such displays would greatly stimulate the advance of electronic books, newspapers and magazines, and also new services offered by (third generation) mobile network operators. These applications currently depend on fragile, heavy and bulky laptops or small, low-resolution displays of mobile phones, which both have clear drawbacks."
Philips said a key element is fabrication of large arrays of polymer-based thin-film transistors (TFT) having "largely identical electrical characteristics," combined with a capacity to model, design, and manufacture circuitry "that exploits the characteristics of organic electronics to the fullest."
The result, the company said, will be an active matrix display of five inches diagonal, 85 dpi resolution, and a 2 cm bending radius – as if you could, indeed, roll it up into something no wider than your pen.
"The resulting display represents the thinnest, and most flexible, active-matrix display reported to date," the company said. "Moreover with close to 80,000 TFTs it is the largest organic electronics-based display yet, with the smallest pixel pitch reported to date… Currently Polymer Vision has the capability of producing over 5,000 fully functional rollable display samples per year, and it is in the process of defining a pilot production line."
The five-inch display is designed to show detailed images, Philips said, but if connected to a mobile phone, the display could also be used to download full Web pages, e-books, and e-mail.
