Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Bright new display technology could jump from cellphones to TVs

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Dec 2002 16:40:50 -0500

NEW YORK (AP) _ A new technology that makes cell phone screens glow like a firefly's tail
may well be destined to brighten
displays on everything from televisions to digital cameras.
Built on organic molecules or polymers that glow when they're electrified, the technology
could even spur the currently
unattainable: roll-up computer screens that can fit in a breast pocket or sheets of
radiant lighting that shimmer like the aurora
borealis.
"Imagine a plastic film or a fiber-optic cable that emits light, that you can bend in any
shape you want," said Stewart Hough,
vice president at Cambridge Display Technologies, "It's one of those
limited-by-your-imagination things."
Hough's company is developing a polymer-based version of the technology, known as Organic
Light-Emitting Diodes or OLEDs
(A diode being a piece of electronics in which current flows in only one direction).
Chemical, electronics and lighting companies _ including Kodak, Samsung, Philips, DuPont
and others _ are pouring funds into
research and development of OLEDs, rushing tiny screens to market and scrambling to race
ahead of competitors.
For now, the monochrome screens appear on a handful of products: cell phones, an MP3
player, car stereos. As the bright new
screens mature into full-color displays with an active matrix that permits video, analysts
say they'll jump to digital camera displays, auto dashboards, laptop screens and TVs.
Global sales of OLEDs, estimated at just $80 million in 2002, are expected to jump to $2.3
billion by 2008, said Kimberly Allen,
research director at iSuppli/Stanford Resources, a firm that tracks the industry.
As OLEDs progress, analysts say they'll replace the silicon-based LCD, or liquid crystal
display technology, that's used in everything from watches and calculators to flat-screen
monitors and some TVs.
OLED screens are comprised of arrays of tiny diodes made of organic materials used in
plastics and polymers. The diodes in
today's little screens are sandwiched between layers of glass, glowing in various colors
as electricity flows through them. The
delicate organics wither and die at a hint of moisture, so glass is needed to keep them
dry.
Experts say it will be a decade or so before someone figures out how to make a durable
OLED screen on a plastic base, perhaps a flexible one, which would require flexible
circuit boards and other components.
A few companies, including DuPont and Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs, are already working
on bendable plastic electronics for
such a screen.
"You could put it on curved surfaces," said Alan Heeger, professor of physics at
University of California at Santa Barbara. "You
can imagine nifty-looking things."
Heeger, whose discoveries in polymer conductivity earned him and two colleagues a Nobel
prize in 2000, said the innovations in
lighting could be more dramatic than those in consumer electronics.
OLEDs, coupled with mature inorganic LED technology that already brightens traffic signals
and auto taillights, could replace
incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs with wallpaper that changes lighting patterns and
colors, sheets of radiant film that
could be cut to size or light cords that accent walls, handrails or steps, Heeger said.
Today's OLED-bearing products are comparatively mundane.
The first emerged in a Pioneer car stereo in 1998. Since then, they've shown up in cell
phones made by Motorola, Fujitsu and
LG, an MP3 player made by Taiwanese firm Delta Optoelectronics and a Philips men's shaver
sold under the Norelco brand in
the United States.
The shaver, with its orange screen that displays battery life, turned up in the recent
James Bond movie "Die Another Day."
For 2003, Samsung is making a cell phone with the first full-color OLED display, for sale
in South Korea, Allen said.
And Kodak is quietly shipping 2-inch horizontal OLED screens to a consumer device
manufacturer it refused to name. Those
screens, configured in the manner of those used in digital cameras, are the first to use
active-matrix technology that can play
video, said Daniel Gisser of Kodak's display products unit. The product will emerge in the
first half of next year, Gisser said.
Larger screens for handheld computers and video cameras might be ready in a year or two,
said Paul O'Donovan, an analyst
with Gartner Dataquest.
Prototypes of 15- and 17-inch screens have been cooked up, although none are expected to
hit stores for years. O'Donovan said OLED PC monitors might be available in four to five
years, televisions in five to 10.
"The trouble is scaling them up," O'Donovan said. "They've got a 2.5 inch screen working
impressively. The real technological
leap will be to expand these into the replacement of TVs."
One manufacturing technique, pioneered by Britain's Cambridge Display Technologies, allows
the screens to be simply "printed" by inkjet printers that can spray glow-producing
polymers onto sheets of glass.
In a few years, analysts and experts predict the onset of flexible plastic displays will
allow roll-to-roll printing, making the screens far cheaper to build than an LCD, which
must be assembled in a vacuum.
OLED screens have several other advantages. Since their polymers emit light on their own,
they do away with the
power-sucking backlight used by LCD screens. Without the backlight, the screens are
lighter and thinner _ display models are
just 1/4-inch thick _ and run longer on a smaller battery.
In cell phones, this means longer talk time between charges.
OLED screens also respond to movement much faster, allowing them to play video without the
blurry muddle seen on LCD
screens. Their colors are sharper and contrast is higher, making 2-inch screens large
enough for TV watching. The screens can
be viewed from wide angles, unlike most LCDs. And the manufacturing process produces less
toxic waste.
But current screens start to degrade after around 10,000 hours of use, with blue pixels
dimming sooner than others, O'Donovan
said. As colors die, the screens take on a magenta hue, he said.
This means that OLEDs aren't ready for long-life products like TVs and computer monitors.
For now, they'll appear in products
with short life cycles, like handheld computers, digital cameras and cell phones.
"There's a lot of money going into R&D and a lot of companies are working on it,"
O'Donovan said. "These problems could be
solved sooner rather than later."

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