ITRI flexible display technology wins Wall Street Journal award

Hsinchu, Taiwan--The Wall Street Journal has announced the winners of the 2010 Technology Innovation Award. Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a nonprofit R&D organization engaging in applied research and technical services, stood up among top international companies including Nokia, Microsoft, and Ford with its ultrathin FlexUPD flexible display technology to win this prestigious award. It is the first time that Taiwan has won two major international awards, the WSJ Technology Innovation Award and the R&D 100 Award, for a single technology. It also represents a big breakthrough for Taiwan in flexible display and planar light-source development. ITRI also received a runner-up award in the semiconductor category for its MDPS (Micro-Deformable Piezoresistive Sensor) technology.

"Since we anticipated the flexible trend in electronics is seen as the up-and-coming trend in electronics, the flexible panel industry chain was made a development priority for ITRI beginning in 2006. By cross-field integration of material research, process development, system integration and panel drivers, ITRI was able to achieve this major breakthrough in material development in 2008," said Jonq-min Liu, executive VP of ITRI and general director of ITRI's Material and Chemical Research Laboratories.

"The key to this award winning FlexUPD technology is its ultra-thin and transparent soft plastic substrate," said Janglin Cheng, general director of ITRI's Display Technology Center. Once the transistors are layered on the plastic substrate and enclosed, it can be cut from the glass stage to make ultra-thin and rollable display that is only 0.01 cm thick. The secret of success is instantaneous removal through the use of a non-stick de-bonding layer material specially developed by ITRI which allows smooth removal of the plastic substrate from the glass stage.

Besides enabling, this substrate can be easily cut from a glass stage to make 0.01 cm thin flexible e-paper. The secret is in the instant removal process where ITRI's newly development release layer material plays a key role. It is like a layer of non-stick material between a crepe and the pan. In addition to letting the crepe slip off the pan easily, the non-stick layer won't damage the filling in the crepe. Simple-to-use and low cost, the technology will help panel display manufacturers transfer their advantage in glass manufacturing processes over to flexible display production. ITRI's division directors Cheng-Chung Lee and Tzong-Ming Lee were the two people who came up with this innovative idea.

ITRI has also recently unveiled a 6-inch color flexible AMOLED color e-paper that can use the flex UPD technology to develop innovative applications. Even when folded, the ultra-thin 0.01 cm screen can still continue to display an image. The folding radius can reach 5 cm or less and brightness is 150 nits. The screen may be scrolled up to 15,000 times without affecting video play function. Mass production is scheduled to begin within one year.

SOURCE: ITRI; www.itri.org.tw/eng/news-and-events/news-detail.asp?RootNodeId=050&NodeId=0501&NewsRoomNBR=195

Posted by:Gail Overton

Subscribe now to Laser Focus World magazine; It’s free!

Follow us on Twitter