Global Tech Korea 2021
Demonstrating three-dimensionally screen movement
Realistic expression of 'lava flowing video'
Vice President Chang-hee Lee "Various innovations in finished products"
Samsung Display and LG Display are starting to innovate the display form factor. The two companies, which have led the organic light emitting diode (OLED) market, plan to dominate the next-generation display market with their advanced technology. On the 8th, Samsung Display unveiled its 13-inch stretchable OLED display for the first time through a keynote speech about materials, parts and equipment on the 3rd day of 'Global Tech Korea 2021' held at COEX in Seoul.
Stretchable OLED is literally a stretchable display as the word implies. The OLED display can be three-dimensionally stretched according to the displayed content. In the operation video released by Samsung Display on that day, the stretchable display showed excellent performance in expressing a three-dimensional effect. When the image of flowing lava was displayed in the stretchable OLED, the screen increased and decreased according to the movement of the lava, and the image expressed realistically.
Samsung Display unveiled the world's first stretchable OLED at the International Society for Information Display (SID) exhibition held in 2017. At that time, the display was 9.1 inches. Samsung Display has advanced the technology and expanded the size of stretchable OLEDs to 13 inches. It seems that Samsung Display's stretchable technology is developing fairly quickly, as the degree of display increase is also improved much more than before. Chang-hee Lee, Vice President of Samsung Display, said, “The degree of stretchable OLEDs was about 5% in the past, but now it has improved significantly. Just as foldable phones commercialized with the development of foldable displays, innovation will occur in finished products with the advent of various displays such as slideable, rollable, and stretchable in the future.”
The stretchable display is evaluated as the most difficult technology to implement. In the industry, there is an assessment that stretchable is the end point of flexible display technology. LG Display is responding to changes in display form factors. Jeom-jae Kim, head of LG Display's Infrastructure Technology Research Center, said in his keynote speech, "Compared to liquid crystal display (LCD), which uses various and complex parts, OLED has a simple structure and can naturally change shape. The OLED is a display that has strengths in terms of design and form factor.
LG Display introduced that it is developing transparent curved or rollable OLED displays to expand into new markets such as architecture, transportation, and furniture, rather than lingering in the existing TV, information technology (IT) and mobile markets. Kim emphasized and said, “Material advancement is necessary for the display form factor. In order to go beyond foldable and stretchable displays, the development of new materials for cover windows that protect the stretchable substrate and screen will have to follow.”
By Staff Reporter Gun-il Yun and Dong-jun Kwon (benyun@etnews.com, djkwon@etnews.com)