Why flexible displays

Learn more about what comes next. Foldables were pretty much the talk of the town at MWC Both Samsung and Huawei had their respective flexible phones on display at the annual mobile extravaganza in Barcelona, though it was strictly hands-off for most people, given that the Galaxy Fold and Huawei Mate X were locked inside glass cases.

In fact, the company launched its FlexPai phone a few months back in a race to one-up Samsung and Huawei. Royole, in fact, has a number of devices that sport malleable displays, some already on the market and others designed to show what is possible.

The Shenzhen-based company teased a super-thin 0. Can you imagine a new kind of e-reader with physical digital pages? This substrate could be plastic, paper, metal, or flexible glass. Flexible displays are typically very light, thin, and almost shatter-proof. Sometimes curved, bendable, and foldable displays are discussed, which are, in principle, the same as flexible displays. Based on information from the same source, the market size in was 2. But where are the flexible displays today, and why are they important?

As of right now, the single biggest applications for flexible displays is the smartphone. The value-added functionality can be debated, but from a purely aesthetic point of view, a flexible display has some quite impressing features. Several smartphone vendors, e. Samsung, LG, Huawei, Sony, Xiaomi, and Oppo, are currently offering phones with flexible displays that are wrapped around the edges of the devices. These displays certainly look beautiful, and this appearance cannot be achieved with a rigid display.

Many actors also claim that the flexible displays are more durable and rugged, which of course is increasing the value of the relatively novel technology.

These devices are usually more versatile in terms of the kinds of upper layers they support, in some cases including a full glass cover. Flexible displays have been around for a decade now. Initial designs were rather underwhelming—but some of them ended up being repurposed into other devices.

For example, the Galaxy Note Edge's curved screen actually started as a prototype for a flexible display device. Samsung followed up with another design a few years later, the Galaxy Round. This was not well received, prompting the company to pursue other paths. The Galaxy Z Flip 3 is a notable example of a device that incorporates a flexible display, and some claimed that it should set some new trends on the market.

Unfortunately, other manufacturers haven't tried to follow the trend, so it remains to be seen whether the idea has any true potential. The device sold well enough, which is a good sign. And in some cases, flexible displays were used to achieve a different effect. The iPhone X, which started the trend of screens with curved corners, actually used a flexible display to accomplish that without sacrificing any real estate around the bezels.

The feature was not widely advertised because Apple focused on the main result of its implementation—the curved corners themselves. Flexible displays remain relatively expensive compared to their regular counterparts and often sacrifice visual quality.

This is especially noticeable when the screen is folded at a particular angle. At the same time, flexible screens tend to have a more limited lifetime compared to traditional ones. Estimates for different models vary, but the point remains that folding most modern displays too many times will eventually damage them permanently. Here we explore some of the attributes of flexible electronics that make this tech attractive to product designers and consumers alike.

Transistors can be made from either inorganic or organic materials, or a mix of both. FlexEnable fabricates transistors using organic materials which replace the silicon and hard ceramic materials with soft, carbon-based materials.

While flexible electronics have many applications, at FlexEnable we are primarily focused on flexible displays. Yet, our flexible OTFT platform can drive flexible sensors and other flexible devices. This platform has enabled the development of flexible organic LCD s OLCDs that can bend down to 10mm and be scaled to large areas making them suitable for a range of applications including automotive, consumer electronics, smart home appliances and digital signage.

Display thickness and weight are especially important features for applications that require large area displays such as automotive and digital signage. Using a flexible substrate instead of glass in combination with organic transistors helps make the whole stack very thin.

For example at FlexEnable we use low-cost bio-based substrates such as TAC tri acetyl cellulose which are just a fraction of a tenth of a millimetre thick.