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Flexible Displays

Project description


Advanced displays
Rolling out market-ready flexible displays

Flexible displays that can be bent, rolled up or even attached to clothing have long captured the imaginations of film-makers. Now they are making the leap from science fiction to science – and consumer – reality.

Displays akin to the newspapers with moving images seen in films such as Minority Report and the Harry Potter series could soon become everyday items thanks to the work of a consortium of European companies and research institutes.

Working in the FlexiDis project, researchers have created the world’s first production-ready method of manufacturing flexible displays. The research has also triggered several spin-off initiatives that should result in commercial products on the market in the near future.

The goal, say the researchers, is not to compete directly with the rigid flat panel displays that have become a common addition to consumer electronics devices, but to start introducing products in novel market areas and even create new markets that could not exist without the technology.

From supermarket displays to e-paper

Flexible displays could, for example, be used to display prices on supermarket shelves, wrapped around vehicles for advertising or attached to the arms of jackets to provide people with location information.

Or they could be incorporated into mobile phones or laptop computers and rolled out when the user wants a bigger, higher resolution screen for watching a movie or looking at architectural drawings.

One of their first uses will be as e-paper, which can be used as rollout displays for reading a book, viewing a digital map or catching up on e-mails on the fly.

E-reader applications are already being developed by two companies spun-off during the FlexiDis project. One is Polymer Vision, set up by project partner Philips. The other is Plastic Logic, established by the University of Cambridge.

Breakthrough manufacturing method

Meanwhile, another partner, Thales Avionics LCD, is using the technology to develop new displays for the avionics industry.

At the heart of the success of the FlexiDis project is a breakthrough in the method used to manufacture flexible displays, allowing them to be produced cost-effectively in existing factories built to make flat panel displays.

Called EPLaR (Electronics on Plastic by Laser Release), the technology works by depositing thin-film transistors (TFTs) – the components that control the state of each pixel in a display – in a plastic layer coated onto a glass plate.

The plastic is a special kind of polymer called polyimide that can resist the high temperatures needed to make the TFTs. It is then pealed from the glass plate using a laser process to create an ultra-thin, light and robust display that can be bent or rolled up like a magazine.

Developing the technology

The partners also experimented with using organic TFTs, which can be deposited at lower temperatures to allow more types of plastics to be used. They tested organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), which emit their own light from each pixel rather than using liquid- crystal pixels that filter light from a background source.

Currently three out of four factories in the world producing flexible displays are in Europe. All four use technologies developed by the FlexiDis project.

Integrated Project "Flexible Displays", or FlexiDis, has the realization of flexible active-matrix displays as its primary goal. The aim of this project is to coordinate a balance of experimental, numerical and demonstrator vehicle development for identifying and researching the main issues for flexible displays. This will include the materials and processing technology, physical studies of the mechanical properties and materials behavior of multilayer structures during processing, under flexing, and during service-life, novel fabrication tools, and substrate handling procedures to make and introduce reliable, flexible active-matrix displays to the market. The demonstrator vehicles will work with two different display technologies, namely full-color organic light-emitting displays (OLED) on bendable metal and/or plastic foils with inorganic thin-film driving transistors, and monochrome electrophoretic (EP) displays on rollable plastic substrates with organic thin-film driving transistors. In this way, use for automotive, mobile telecommunications, and toys can be examined. FlexiDis will strengthen ties between leading European research efforts in different disciplines and build a common standard for flexible display reliability, testing methodologies, and substrate handling in Europe and lead to implementation of these novel displays in applications.

Fields of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

FP6-2003-IST-2
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

IP - Integrated Project

Coordinator

PHILIPS ELECTRONICS NEDERLAND B.V.
EU contribution
€ 4 105 105,00
Address
Professor Holstlaan 4 (WY5-38)
5656 AA Eindhoven
Netherlands

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Total cost
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Participants (27)

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Last update: 11 April 2016

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Permalink: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/004354

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