SonyCorp Develops Roll-up Display Panel

Sony’s R&D hard at work, says Forbes.com and Japanese newspaper. New display technology will be available within a few years.

According to Forbes.com, researchers from SonyCorp and the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research developed a highly flexible and thin display panel. It’s capable of being rolled up like a piece of paper and has an industry-high resolution of 79dpi. The Nihon Keizai Shimbum reported the news without citing sources.

Sony aims to commercialize products based on the new display technology, applying it to televisions and mobile phones, around 2010, the business daily said.

The prototype display is 6.3cm square and 0.35mm thick. Its picture resolution is higher than the current 50 dpi of bendable displays and even higher than the 72 dpi of a typical LCD panel, the report said.

Based on LCD elements, the panel uses transistors made from an organic material and printed onto a plastic substrate, the Nikkei said. An organic material also makes up he insulation layer. Sony researchers developed a way to form the layer on the substrate at temperatures low enough to prevent the plastic from warping, permitting the transistors to flex, the newspaper reported.