Display developments

The display industry has come a tremendous way since the first days of electromechanical TV at the turn of the last century. For example, this year’s Society for Information Display show had technologies from iridescent reflective to a resurrected field-emissive screen, among many others.

The OLED and its manufacture (Dupont had a major presence for its phosphor, OLED, and other display materials) as well as electronic paper were the buzz, and promise to actually become available to consumers in real quantities this coming year.

Many companies sush as LG Philips had flexible electronic ink displays with color e-paper just on the threshold of becoming a viable technology, but for the near future the products will only be available in monochrome. Now poised to enter the market, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology was the real hot ticket. OLED’s color, brightness, and thinness make it the hot new tech for next-generation PDA, media, and smart phone apps. Their relatively short lifetime (in small screen sizes, approximately 3 years) aren’t an issue in a market that turns every 18 months.