Sony is demonstrating their prototype roll-up OLED display at the SID conference in Seattle this week (video below).  It can be rolled around a tube with a diameter as small as 0.8 centimeters.  Sony says there was no clear degradation in picture quality after 1000 cycles of rolling and unrolling the display.  They only tested up to 1000?  I’d probably burn through that many cycles in the first day, going, “Now you see the picture of Frank Stallone . . . now it’s gone!”

The screen is only 80μm thick (thinner than a human hair, which averages around 100 µm). It’s 4.1 inch wide with 432 x 240 pixels (121 ppi resolution).  It displays over 16 million colors with a contrast ratio of over 1000:1.  It’s made with organic insulators and a new organic semiconductor, peri-Xanthenoxanthene (PXX) derivative.  Producing these organic materials requires fewer steps and uses less energy than producing semiconductors with inorganic materials like silicon.  According to Sony, it’s the first screen that can still display images and video while being rolled.  Now I can finally live the dream of having thousands of LOLcats rolled up into my pants.


[Sony via CrunchGear]