Recently, as domestic display manufactures are in keen competition, the research and development outputs become highly visible. The degree of transparency was considerably upgraded to 30% and the size is getting more than twice bigger every year.
According to the industry, domestic display manufacturers are speeding up in research for improvement of transparency and enlargement of size for transparent flexible display.
As to transparent flexible display, its core relies on how flexibly it is bent and on realization of its large size. Currently, LG Display Co., Ltd. and Samsung Display improved the existing 10% transparency level up to 20~30%.
"The criteria of technical standard for transparent display 275 is penetration ratio. The improvement of 1~2% transparent degree gives sufficient meaning and it is a technically difficult part." the insider of this industry said. "In particular, the improvement of 30% in large size product is estimated to be an epoch-making improvement of efficiency."
The size is also getting rapidly bigger and bigger. Recently, 55-inch transparent organic light-emitting diode 176(OLED), the largest size of all time, was showcased at `ISE 2015`, public display exhibition held in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Displayed by Planar, the expert company in public information display(PID) in U.S., this product has 55-inch size and 30% light penetration ratio. According to this industry, it is reported that this transparent display introduced by this company was produced by Samsung Display. As Planar plans to supply its products in earnest starting from early next year, mass production by Samsung Display is presumably imminent.
Through national projects related to transparent flexible display, LG Display dominates technical development. Last year, it released 18-inch flexible OLED with HD class display resolution near one million pixels. This year, it aims at more than 30-inch products. The final objective in national projects is to develop 60-inch transparent flexible display with 40% resolution by 2017.
"The time frame of development objective is favorably progressing", he said. "Technical leap is taken every year, but enlargement of size is much harder than transparency ratio, relatively." LG Display had showcased 55-ich LCD transparent display with 17% transparency ration at the latest CES 2015. This product is actively applied to refrigerator doors.
The bending technique also realizes the high technology up to rollable level in obvolution. Currently, OLED transparent display without separate light source is actively being developed in Korea. Due to existence of structural factors hampering penetration ratio such as liquid crystal and color filter, its improvement of penetration ration is still hard. But as OLED has self-light emitting style and simple structure, its realization of transparent display is relatively suitable.
"The scope of application by transparent flexible display is infinite to like shopping mall, museum and building lobbies, etc.", the insider of this industry said. "As it is paid attention as the next generation display, the technological gap against the competing countries should be widened through sustainable investment and technical development."
Staff Reporter Sung, Hyun-hee sunghh@etnews.com