LG Philips patents oil and water flexi-displays

Oil and water don't mix

31 July 2007 10:04 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

The LG Philips LCD Company has filed a patent for a flexible display made of oil and water.

At the moment, the company makes flexible displays consisting of OLEDs on a flexible plastic.

Apparently the problem with this is the OLEDs need to be made at a higher temperature than the melting point of the plastic substrate, which means the OLEDS have to be produced on glass and then transferred to plastic.

This extra manufacturing makes the process more expensive and timely.

The patent filed suggests instead of making pixels out of OLEDs, they are made from oil and water in tiny plastic cells connected to plastic electrodes.

The opaque oil then floats on the water and obscures a coloured surface beneath. When an electric field force is applied the oil moves away from the water, revealing the coloured layer beneath and changing the colour of the pixel.

Apparently this type of reflective display can be made at low temperatures in a small number of steps, bringing us closer then ever to flexible e-paper.