Sony Corporation (‘Sony’) announced today that it developed a super-flexible 80 ?m-thick 4.1-in 121 ppi OTFT*1-driven full color OLED display which can be wrapped around a thin cylinder.
To create the display, Sony developed OTFTs with an original organic semiconductor material (a PXX derivative) with eight times*2 the current modulation of conventional OTFTs. This was achived due to the development of integration technologies of OTFTs and OLEDs on an ultra-thin 20 ?m thick flexible substrate (a flexible on-panel gate-driver circuit with OTFTs which is able to get rid of convetinal rigid driver IC chips interfering roll-up of a display) and soft organic insulators for all the insulators in the integration cuircuit. By combining these technologies, Sony successfully demonstrated the world’s first OLED panel*3 which is capable of reproducing moving images while being repeatly rolled-up – around a cylinder with a radius of 4 mm – and stretched. Sony will unveil the results of this development on May 27 at “SID (Society for Information Display) 2010 International Symposium” in Seattle, WA (May 23-28).

Photo of OTFT-driven OLED display wrapped around a cylinder with 4 mm radius (moving image can also be reproduced)

Sony will proceed with the development of the solution / print based process which manufactures display devices from organic materials that are easily dissolved in common solvents. This process requires fewer steps, and consumes materials and energy more efficiently – thus has a smaller environmental footprint – compared to the conventional high temperature vacuum semiconductor process which use inorganic, silicon materials.
Sony will continue to improve the performance and reliability of its flexible organic displays because the application of these developments are expected to yield thin, light-weight, durable and mobile devices with enhanced form-factor.

Technology Features

1. High performance OTFT with originally developed high-mobility and highly-stable organic semiconductor materials, PXX derivatives

Sony has developed organic semiconductor material, peri-Xanthenoxanthene (PXX) derivative, which is stable under exposure to oxygen, moisture, light and heat and improved current modulation of eight-times*2 that of conventional OTFT with organic semiconductor of pentacene. Improvement of this OTFT achieved the world’s highest-resolution OTFT-driven OLED display with resolution of 121 ppi and 432 x 240 x RGB (FWQVGA) pixels*4.