Sony shows bendable 0.3mm color e-paper display

Updated May 25: Sony has revealed an experimental flexible full color display that is only 0.3mm thick. The 2.5-inch prototype panel shown at a technology conference today weighs 1.5 grams. Sony claims it is the world's first flexible full color organic EL (electroluminescent) display with an organic TFT drive.

The bright 120×160 pixel panel with a display density of 80 pixels per inch was demonstrated at the SID 2007 symposium in California. The unit can display 16 million colors and is fast enough to display video, the company says.

The prototype has a brighness of 100 cd/m2, and a contrast ratio of 1:1000, according to Sony. The display is built up via deposition process with the Organic TFT drive elements first applied to a plastic film, followed by the Organic EL elements which make up the actual display.


Giant OLED plans explained

In related news, Sony has responded to doubts about the feasability of its plans to manufacture large-sized OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) TV displays this year by explaining more about the technology behind them.

The company plans to make 27.3 inch OLED TVs  – far larger than any product announced by competitors. In January, Sony showed a smaller prototype with a 1cm thick screen at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), and announced that an 11-inch version of that screen will be mass produced and go on sale in 2007.

More technical details of Sony's large OLED panel manufacturing plans at Nikkei Business Press

Details of the flexible organic EL display are (in Japanese) at Sony Japan.

Update May 25: Added video

Dead pixel OLED!

Check out those fat black vertical lines down the screen all through the video!

You can't see them in the still photo, which must been taken before the video was.

Somebody clumsy has bent the screen too far while they were demoing it, methinks, and they've made a few hundred dead pixels!