A new flexible video display system that is also transparent is set to hit the market soon. Designed for commercial applications the “bendy” display is manufactured around LED technology. The new display systems will be possible because of the introduction of new LED video display technology that allows advertisers to literally wrap a screen around an object using tiny light-emitting LED diodes that can be attached to materials such as glass or rubber. “[This] enables new kinds of ‘form factors’ that would allow you to put lighting sources on curved surfaces or in corners, places where you can’t put light sources nowadays,” Professor John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told BBC News recently. Currently TV manufacturers are starting to sell LED TV’s that use less power and deliver a brighter picture because they are up to 400 times brighter than LCD. During the BBC interview Rogers said “If you look at the billboard displays that exist already, they’re inorganic LED based. You can see them on a bright sunny day; it would be impossible to generate that kind of brightness out of an organic LED.” When arrays of inorganic LED’s are used – such as those in billboard displays – they are made in a large wafer which is sawn into bits. Each bit is then placed individually by a robot arm, making the production of large or dense arrays complex. “Because you can get away with very low coverage by area, it opens up the possibility of making something that’s see-through,” Professor Rogers explained. |
