OLED display is 'biggest ever'

17 Jun 2002

The world's largest full-color polymer organic light-emitting diode display has been unveiled in Japan.

Japan-based Toshiba Matsushita Display (TMD) has developed what it claims is the largest full-color polymer organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display. With a 17-inch diagonal and comprising 1280 x 768 pixels, the resulting display offers the highest resolution ever seen.

The company says that this development was made possible by breakthroughs in ink-jet printing and solvent-material technologies for depositing a polymer film. Thanks to both of these advances, high-resolution displays can be produced without the need for a vacuum environment.

To make this type of display, a light-emitting polymer film is deposited on a low-temperature polysilicon thin-film transistor (TFT). Pixels are then formed on a TFT array where the data is displayed by OLEDs.

This display features 262 144 colors and 64 grayscale levels. In a so-called XGA widescreen format, the display also has a brightness in the range 100 to 300 cd/m².

TMD expects OLED displays to penetrate the cellular phone and personal digital assistant market initially, but says that the development of a 17-inch wide OLED confirms their application as larger displays for audio-visual equipment such as televisions.

The device was exhibited at last weeks Electronic Display Forum in Japan. The previous record size for an OLED display was held by Sony which showcased a 13-inch prototype based on small-molecule OLEDs at the Society for Information Technology conference in June 2001.

TMD is a recent merger of the LCD and organic LED businesses of Toshiba and Matsushita Electrical Industrial.

Author
Jacqueline Hewett is news reporter on Optics.org and Opto & Laser Europe magazine.