November 2005

news archive

Samsung Announces World's Largest Flexible Transmissive LCD Panel

Seoul, November 28 - Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. announced today that it has developed the world's largest flexible transmissive TFT-LCD, and that it has sufficiently high resolution to display digital television content.

The seven-inch, 640 x 480 flexible display uses a transparent plastic substrate that is thinner, lighter, and more durable than the conventional LCD glass panels used today. Moreover, the full-color, transmissive LCD panel maintains a constant thickness even when bent. The flexible TFT-LCD technology is optimized for mobility applications, including cell phones and notebook computers. The new display, which is double the size of Samsung's five-inch flexible LCD display prototype announced in January 2005, has an aperture ratio of 40 percent, a luminance of 100 nits, and a color gamut that is 60 percent NTSC.

The new display overcomes serious problems involving the plastic substrate's heat sensitivity. Samsung developed a low-temperature (less than 130 degrees Celsius) processing technique that can be used to manufacture the display's amorphous-thin-film transistors and color filters at process temperatures much lower than standard, glass-based, amorphous-silicon technology. Samsung's proprietary LCD technology minimizes substrate deformation by preventing not only changes in thickness, but also distortion of images by binding two extremely thin panels together.

The latest flexible LCD panel was developed under a three-year program funded by Samsung Electronics' next-generation display development group under the auspices of the Korean Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy.

Samsung 32-inch Field-Sequential LCD Draws Crowds and Skepticism
by Ken Werner

At FPD International 2005 - held October 19-21 at the Pacifico Yokohama exhibition center in Yokohama, Japan - Samsung Electronics' 32-inch "Color-Filter-Less" LCD drew such large crowds that it was often difficult to view the display (photo). The LED-backlit, field-sequential-color (FSC) display had been well promoted before the show, which explains the crowds. But even though this was the largest FSC LCD ever shown, the color gamut was 110 percent of NTSC, and the power consumption was only 82 watts (for 500 nits), not everybody was impressed because there was a readily noticeable flicker in the display.

A staffer said that the flicker was only in the red channel, and blamed it on an instability in the power supply. But Tom Credelle (ClairVoyante Laboratories), who was a member of the crowd, saw the "flicker" as a basic color break-up problem. Masaya Okita (Hunet Display Technology), also in the crowd, said that the 32-inch used OCB mode, and that a critical compensation film has been a problem in ramping up OCB until now.

Although Samsung Electronics VP Seongsik Shin had cited cost savings in the initial announcement of the display, Jeremy Burroughes (Cambridge Display Technology) wasn't so sure. Citing the current cost of the high-speed electronics and the LED backlight unit, Burroughes said, "The Samsung FSC is probably cost neutral."

But with LED chips rapidly getting cheaper, brighter, and more efficient, and with the possibility that Fuji Photo Film may now be ramping up production of the problematic OCB-WV film, the relative-cost situation may soon look better. With that done, Samsung will still have to deal with the "flicker."