Technology innovation

With this new innovation strategy, you’ve got a very thin and flexible screen that run’s with very low power. 

We wont see this innovation strategy in the store yet, but it should be available for U.S. soldier in the next year or so. Army-backed research being done at Arizona State University’s Flexible Display Center have shown very great result lately. The Army wants to desing small displays that can be folded up, have very little weight and won’t break. That would give their soldier a very great strategic advantage.

When the flexible displays will be avaible to public, it will surely be a very big leap from today’s LCDs and even organic LEDs displays. Considering the difference in power consumption, the flexible displays will consume almost 100 times less power than LCDs. Even OLEDs, which are two to three times more efficient than LCDs, can’t match that kind of efficiency.

This technology is based on electrophoretic ink-based displays that are extremely low power and flexbile. They are made of thin-film transistor arrays on specialty polymer and thin stainless-steel substrates. Electrophoretic ink (E Ink) is used to render the characters. E Ink, a great innovation strategy from MIT, is made of tiny microcapsules. In each of them, positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles are floating in a clear fluid. Once an electric current goes thru, the particles move to the bottom or the top of the microcapsule, depending on direction of the flowing current.

To build the display, the e-ink is printed on a sheet of plastic, which is then laminated to control circuitry.