South Korea – The display industry has been speeding up the release of consumer products that use electronic paper, which was conceived from initiatives to produce durable LCDs. But although here-and-now applications exist such as POP displays and e-books, commercialization is not expected to happen until after 2010. When the technology does mature, its applications are seen to extend to newspapers, mobile phones, PDAs, tablets, wearable displays and digital albums.
Electronic paper has five major advantages. (1) It is easy to read, thanks to support for 8:1 to 10:1 contrast ratio and up to 180° viewing angle. (2) It is not fragile, being made of a plastic substrate instead of glass. It needs no polarizing plate and is thinner and lighter than LCD. (3) Electronic paper has extremely low power consumption. While 37in LCDs and plasma displays consume 300-400W of power, electronic paper only needs less than 1/100th of power. (4) Consequently, regardless of the size of the device for which the electronic paper will be used, no cooling fan is necessary. (5) Finally, electronic paper has a memory function of the last screen displayed.
New e-paper products
Last May, LG.Philips LCD Co. Ltd announced the successful development of an A4 color flexible electronic paper, just a year after it rolled out a 14in b/w electronic paper. The new product uses E Ink's imaging film with a metal foil substrate for better flexibility and durability. It supports 4,096 colors and 180° viewing angle. LG.Philips, which has already applied for about 130 patents related to flexible display, plans to conduct further R&D to realize ultralight and ultraslim flat-panel displays.
Neolux Co. Ltd has taken the technology further with the release of NP-601, an e-book device that carries the Nuut brand. The device uses Vizplex, E Ink's imaging film that supports 740ms typical switch speed, 260ms peak switch speed and 40 percent of typical reflectance. It backs eight levels of grayscale. It has a glass substrate, so it is not flexible.
The NP-601 has 512MB internal memory, supports an SD memory card and connects to a PC through a USB 2.0 port. It can store 1,000 books and comics that can be downloaded from the company's online bookstore. It can read texts in Korean, English, Japanese, Russian and standard Chinese, adopting the .xlm e-book format. Designed for ease of use, the model features a variety of methods to turn pages and view footnotes. MP3 playback is an added feature. The unit runs on a Li-polymer battery, measures 117x188x8mm and weighs 178g.
We are very pleased to be the first to launch this next-generation display device in South Korea, said Neolux CEO Woo-jong Kang. We hope the Nuut NP-601 will play a key role in the growth of South Korea's e-book industry.
Neolux, which began volume production of the model last July, expects 90 percent of its total output to be absorbed by the domestic market. Monthly output is estimated at10,000 units this year and is forecast to increase to 30,000 to 40,000 units in 2008, with exports anticipated to go up to 50 percent.
Neolux is looking to export the product to the United States and Europe, but because Sony dominates these markets, the company is also considering non-English-speaking regions.
For further R&D, Neolux plans to focus on hardware performance rather than functionality expansion to keep the original design within the same low power requirement. Aside from manufacturing the digital reader, the company also provides custom POP products to domestic and overseas clients.
Flexible LCDs, OLEDs explored
The flexible display market will be a $280 million business by 2010, and will grow to $5.9 billion by 2015 and $12.2 billion by 2017, according to Displaybank forecasts. Already, the growing interest in the industry is evident. At the Korea Display Conference 2007, flexible display was the focal point of Korea University's presentation, which discussed how displays have evolved from durable to bendable and finally to flexible. Samsung, on the other hand, discussed the R&D trends in the flexible display market, which are running alongside those of electronic paper. The efforts to develop flexible LCDs and OLEDs are being spearheaded by the major players, including Sharp, Toshiba, Pioneer, Sony, LG and Samsung.
Other possible flexible substrate technologies as additions to the existing plastic and metal foil types are also being explored. These include bare substrate, ultrahigh barrier coating, chemical-resistant coating and transparent conductor coating.
Samsung believes that flexible display is ready for the niche markets. However, it said that further applications have to be found and manufacturing issues settled for the display to become mainstream.
-
-
-
-
-
-
