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Sci Tech
Get set for the next wave of displays
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Recent breakthroughs in materials technology, hold out the hope that within two years, you may be able to roll and carry your TV with you. Anand Parthasarathy examines the current excitement in the IT industry , over the Light EmittingPolymer (LEP).
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Towards the flexible TV: Fabricating flexible liquid crystal displays at Philips Research. Inset Light emitting polymer wris twatch-TV screen from Cambridge Display Technologies.
Imagine these scenarios:
- After watching the breakfast news on TV, you roll up the set like a large handkerchief, and stuff it into your briefcase. On the bus or train journey to your office, you can pull it out and catch up with the latest stock market quotes on CNBC.
- Somewhere in the Kargil sector, a platoon commander of the Indian Army readies for the regular satellite updates that will give him the latest terrain pictures of the border in his sector. He unrolls a plastic-like map and hooks it to the unit's satellite telephone. In seconds, the map is refreshed with the latest high resolution camera images grabbed by an Indian satellite which passed over the region just minutes ago.
- Vanitha is getting dressed before stepping out— and today she decides that she wants to stay connected. She chooses a salwar-kameez set , which has a special ultra-thin panel stitched on to the sleeve. When not in use the panel blends into the kalankari design of the dress.But when she pulls a thin cord, it activates the panel which becomes an instant communication console: displaying email messages, providing a small keyboard for entering text and yes, if she is bored she can switch to TV mode and catch MTV or Channel V.
CORRECTION: DON'T imagine these scenarios at least not for too long. Before the year is out, you may be able to see a few prototypes of these devices; and within two years, you can expect a spate of commercial products on these lines. Say goodbye to power-hungry cathode ray tube monitors and pricey LCDs. And say hello to the Next Wave of Display Technology : cheap, lightweight , flexible and wearable.
These developments stemmed from a discovery 13 years ago, of a compound: p-phenylenevinylene, which glowed with a yellow light when subjected to an electric charge. In the decade since then, scientists discovered two other compounds which could emit red and blue light when charged. Red, Yellow and Blue were the three basic colours that drove TV and PC monitors so potentially they could replace the electronic gun of the cathode ray tube (CRT) display as well as the Liquid crystal display (LCD) of the more recent, thin-and-flat notebook PCs and wristwatches. A display screen using such Light Emitting Polymers (LEPs) could then be made by sandwiching two or three layers of polymer (polymers are molecules of plastic) between charged plates and then pasting them on a glass or plastic substrate.
The UK-based Cambridge Display Technology (CDT), has been working in this arena for nearly a decade. The challenge was to come up with a cost effective way of producing the colour screens. (LCD displays are costly because of the complex vacuum process). A Cambridge Licensee, Seiko-Epson, the Japanese printer giant, came up with the solution: a special ink jet printer where the three colour polymers could be loaded in cartridges and the screen printed much as we print colour pictures.
The next challenge was to find a sufficiently thin substrate material on which to print the colour screen. Here the answer came from the Dutch electronics company, Philips who have been pursuing their own research in both Flexible Liquid Crystal Displays as well as Organic Light Emitting Displays (OLEDs). Six months ago it announced a breakthrough — an incredibly thin substrate material about one-millionth of an inch thick. In December 2001, Philips demonstrated the world's first flexible TV-type LCD matrix display leading to media headlines about Rollup TVs and Floppy screens. (The development was reported by The Hindu, on this page on December 20 2001, Roll and carry TV screens).
Since then, Philips ,CDT and other players in organic polymer displays like Kodak and Motorola have taken the technology forward. Sony demonstrated a prototype 25 cm, 800 by 600 pixel display and said it would begin mass producing them by 2003. Toshiba has concentrated on polymer OLED colour displays for small portable devices like mobile phones and hand held computers. In April this year it unveiled a portable display that supported 260,000 colours.
A problem these early players have to lick, is the operating life of OLEDs which is still much less than the 10,000 hours that LCDs average. But on one point most observers agree: the industry is very close to commercial realization of polymer displays that can be rolled , twisted, folded and eventually sold by the metre like a trouser length. We live in an information-intense, display-centric world. Just think of the number of hours we spend staring at TV screens, public monitors, dynamic hoardings. Any day, you can drape yourself in it, or just take it with you.
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