The Future of Organic Light Emitting Diodes is NOW
Well…
not really alive, but in the near future it’s likely be organic. “Organic” meaning that it is based on carbon
atom technology. What does this mean?
 |
| A bendable display that could be rolled up and put away.. |
What
about replacing your car dashboard with a heads up display? A heads up display that not only can tell you
your current speed and GPS direction but also one that can provide augmented
reality, pointing out on your windshield precisely where a particular
restaurant is or what stores are in front of the car. Traditional dashboards
would become a relic of the past. The
heads up display would appear with the relevant data you need, when you need
it.
The “heads up” display might also
appear on your side mirrors if you’d like that option. Or how about rear and
directional lights that are actually part of the metallic body?
Oh
why not… how about a car that is actually a display device?
Going a bit further on this theme,
what about a heads up display on your glasses like Apple's
and Google’s
augmented reality displays? These are displays that really take the HUD concept to the next level. And why should we stop there? How about
augmented reality in your contact
lenses? A proof of concept for augmented reality contact lenses has been accomplished. This brings a heads up display, literally, right in front of your eyes! Yes, of course we can’t focus on pixels that close to our eyes but the developers of this technology have solutions for that as well.
 |
| A glance at Apple's iGlass concept |
Science Fiction? Not
really. There’s a technology called Organic
Light Emitting Diodes (OLED) that will take us to the next level in display
technology. It has nothing to do with
holography or even auto-stereoscopic displays.
It’s a technology that’s been around for quite some time. Luminance
in organic material was first described in France in the 50’s and in 1987 Ching
W. Tang and Steven Van Slyke developed the world's first working OLED at
Eastman Kodak. Today, there’s a great deal of buzz about OLED because it’s
likely to become a significant part of our communication, production and
entertainment world within the next two years.
In fact it’s already here. I
currently own a Lumia 900 that I consider the best cell phone I’ve ever
owned. Aside from the fact that it’s a
superior Windows Smartphone, it’s the brightest display I’ve ever seen and it
has the blackest blacks of any phone I’ve had to date. The image quality is exceptional. The reason the display is so good is because
it’s an OLED display.
How does it work? The OLED is typically constructed of either
two or three extremely thin organic (carbon based) substrates sandwiched
between a cathode and an anode. Both the
cathode and anode can be transparent allowing for a transparent or glass-like
appearance when electric current is not being applied.
When
fully constructed, the diode is about 200 times thinner than a human hair. When
a minute flow of electrical current (flow of electrons) is applied from the
cathode to the anode thru the organic substrate layers, carbon atoms in
substrate #1 lose an electron to carbon atoms in substrate # 2. This creates what’s commonly referred to as a
“hole” in the outer shell of carbon atoms comprising substrate #1, which puts
it into an unstable state. What happens
next is that the missing electrons move back to the original substrate, filling
the hole and bringing it back to a stabile state. In the process of moving from substrate #2
back to #1, each electron generates energy, which is expressed as a release of
photons or light.
OLED
technology and displays were the focus of this year's annual Society for
Informational Display (SID 2012)
conference and apparently Samsung and LGD's OLED TVs were the talk of
the show. In fact, Samsung, LG,
Panasonic and Sony have all been devoting enormous R&D budgets to making
OLED a flagship product for HDTVs, mobile phones, computer monitors, tablets, laptops, gaming systems, watches, cameras A/V players, lamps, and more.
 |
| An OLED watch/cell phone/media player |
 |
| a flexible cell phone screen |
 |
| a laptop with a transparent screen |
In fact, Phillips has actually produced an OLED fabric that can be used for home or building décor or even for clothing. Yes, I said clothing! Smart textiles have already been introduced by several companies and there are web sites dedicated to the collaboration of technology and fashion. Engineers at UCLA have created flexible OLED using carbon based nanotubes that they claim can bend, swell, shrink, and fold. Is this a precursor to more stylish OLED clothing that can change color and design electronically? Could it be, as Dan Nosowitz states in his blog on PopSci, that this could potentially lead to a cell phone that can actually stretch into a tablet when needed? The remarkable thing is that this technology exists and the many innovations people are considering today are only the tip of the OLED iceberg.
Phillips has also created a transparent OLED white light source that is expected to be in commercial production this year.
 |
| a transparent light source created by Phillips |
Other
lighting companies, including OSRAM,
GE, LG, Lumiotec, UDC and Samsung have also been working on creating OLED
light sources. Some people have called
OLED the light source of the future. It
has very low power consumption, does not generate heat and lasts longer than
conventional lamps.
 |
| an OLED Chandelier |
As
with any new technology, OLED is not perfect.
It costs much more to produce than a traditional LCD but with some
innovative printing technology, OLEDs have the potential to become considerably
cheaper. The design is simple but the
process of manufacturing them is very difficult and expensive. Because of this, large OLED displays are not
widely available and the technology is more focused on small-screen
applications such as smartphones and hand held game platforms. OLEDs have a limited lifetime of
approximately 14,000 hours for HDTVs to hit half brightness. Today the longevity of OLEDs has been
extended to the point where it’s essentially a non-issue. OLEDs do not function well in sunlight
because it emits light itself. However,
the newer OLED technology such as the Super AMOLED Plus
produced by Samsung and Nokia’s CBD
displays are proving to be superior to LCDs. Also, water can easily damage the display so
they must be sealed
water tight. These disadvantages of
OLEDs are being addressed with literally billions of R&D dollars, with
Samsung leading the way.
Of
course the
advantages or OLEDs are enormous. We’ve
already discussed the flexibility of OLED technology and the potential of
having printing processes used for mass production at a reasonable cost. LCD displays require back lighting because
they do not in themselves emit light.
This not only increases the required thickness of the product but also
requires considerably more power. Indeed,
OLED HDTVs can be extremely thin, on the order of a few millimeters or
less. Since all pixels in an LCD require
backlighting, there can never be true black so the overall contrast of LCD is
remarkably less than OLED. Color
saturation is also greatly enhanced with light-emitting pixels as is the field
of view.
The
future of display technology is looking brighter, more colorful than ever,
thinner, flexible, malleable and even wearable.
The potential of 3D monitors in our everyday prescription glasses has
become a reality. I’ll be the very first
adaptor!
