Was the Future of Television Technology Just Unveiled in Japan?

[Dynasty]

Sony Unveils First OLED TV- PC World article

Today is the first I've heard of OLED (organic light-emitting diode) technology. Naturally, it sounds cool but I'm interested if anybody knows its true potential.

The defining characteristic of the 11-inch OLED television (shown in the Createc 2007 exhibition) is that the screen is only 3 millimieters thick.



One story about the technoology said that larger screens will come shortly and that the OLED televisions will simply be hung up on your walls like a painting.

The technology is also flexible. That means it's thought future TV screens could actually be rolled up like a poster.



Here's a more detailed article about the OLED

[Dudd]

AVS Forum thread
Somehow, salmon DNA is involved. Sounds pretty crazy.

[gumpzilla]

There's definitely a lot of research being done on organic semiconductor electronics, with stuff like this being one of the major applications. It's cheap, it's pretty easy to deposit (special inkjet printers can do it), it's flexible, etc. A colleague of mine just gave a talk on his research along these lines yesterday. One comment he made toward the end is that though people have shown some preliminary progress with displays using this technology, right now they aren't necessarily consumer ready, as they respond pretty negatively to air, water, etc. I think the problem is impurities bonding to the surface and significantly affecting the conduction properties of the organic.

On the one hand, the end result of stuff like this is pretty cool and I could imagine trying to do this kind of R&D after I graduate. On the other, the nature of the science that you do on this kind of stuff seems pretty goddamn boring. Spray one batch of material on some substrate, put some wires on it, take some measurements, try again with different mixtures of chemical / substrate / contact materials / contact geometries, etc.

[Case Closed]

So is this like the TV screen from Back to the Future 2?

[Pudge714]

Brag: Have to do an assignment on emerging technologies. Thanks for giving me the idea Dynasty.

[traz]

[ QUOTE ]
Brag: Have to do an assignment on emerging technologies. Thanks for giving me the idea Dynasty.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is not a brag

[capone0]

I heard about this in 2003 at my school from a PHD who was working on this for Kodak. It's pretty close although she didn't have much info to give us at the time. It probally is the future though.

I think there are simple OLEDs found in cellphones already.

[Sayitloudernow]

[ QUOTE ]
Brag: Have to do an assignment on emerging technologies. Thanks for giving me the idea Dynasty.

[/ QUOTE ]

Brag: Not in school so no "assignments"
Beat: Have a job with assignments [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[J.A.Sucker]

Dynasty,

I haven't read the responses, but have done quite a bit of work with OLED materials and I know a lot about them. They've been making OLED displays in cell phones for a couple of years now (I think the Moto Razor was the first one in the States). They look good and are cheap to make, but they fade over time. Basically, organics degrade due to attack by photo-activated oxygen radicals over time (called photobleaching) - this makes them no longer luminescent. Solid state materials aren't as susceptible to photobleaching and last longer. OLED TV's should be cheap, but that's about it. They'll probably suck after a very short lifespan and the picture quality isn't gonna be as good as other choices (plasma, LCD, DLP). They are cheap, though, and can be very thin.

This technology will be good for low power consumption, somewhat disposable applications - cell phones and laptop screens. I guess you wouldn't mind buying a new TV every year if you could get a 60" screen for like 100 bucks or something, but that's a marketing question and not a scientific one.

[Sayitloudernow]

Keyboard that uses O-LED's