MAY 22--Toshiba Corporation has developed a large, flexible liquid-crystal display (LCD), opening the way to the display of images on curved screens and moving toward the long-term goal of foldable LCDs. The new display is a full-color, 8.4-inch, super-slim low-temperature polysilicon active-matrix TFT LCD supporting SVGA resolution. This new flexible display will be presented at the Society for Information Display 2002 in Boston, MA (May 21 to 23).
The flexible LCD brings new potentialities to design, while its super-slim profile--less than 0.4 mm--achieves a weight of less than 20 g--a quarter to a fifth that of present low-temperature polysilicon TFT LCDs. The flexibility of the screen also increases its resistance to shock.
Toshiba realized the flexible display by developing technology to achieve an extremely thin glass substrate, the layer on which TFTs are formed, and attaching it to a flexible sheet. Displays using this technology can be manufactured at the normal process temperature. The new display can be flexed in all directions and bent to form a curve with a radius of curvature as high as 20 cm.
Applications for the new display will include TVs with curved screens that can be mounted in public places and information displays in trains or buses. Toshiba is now developing mass-production technology for the display, and Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Corporation expects to launch commercial products after fiscal year 2004.
