Korean electronics giant LG recently revealed a 55-inch OLED TV that’s so light and thin (1.45 kg and 1 millimeter thick… or better yet, ‘1-millimeter thin’) that it can be mounted on a wall with only magnets. Dubbed ‘wallpaper TV’, it’s only in the proof-of-concept stage… but wow! LG has not announced plans as to whether a consumer version of its wallpaper television will be brought to market.
Short for organic light-emitting diode, OLED screen technology, which was actually created by several television manufacturers, is still expensive to produce since there is a low yield rate of manufactured displays that are actually functional. LG claims that it has developed a way to mass-produce large-screen OLEDs at an 80 per cent success rate.
The new LG OLED screen, introduced at a corporate event in Seoul on May 20, 2015, can basically be affixed to and later detached like a fridge magnet. The panel sticks to walls via a magnetic mat that’s installed beforehand. Together, they weigh much less than even the thinnest, most minimalist existing flat-screen TVs available today. According to the company, the 1,200 x 810 flexible, ‘fridge magnet’ OLED TV panel can be rolled up to a radius of just 3 cm without damaging its display.
Sourced from www9.pcmag.com
The thinnest current retail models of any LG TV are the company’s 2015 ultra HD OLED sets with screens that are 4.5 mm thick. The Korean electronics giant was the first in the world to start selling the now popular (albeit expensive) 4K ultra HD (High Definition) OLED TVs in late 2014. This year, LG released a number of new 2015 OLED 4K models with still more advanced internal features. Additionally, LG is either well into development or already in the process of releasing 4K OLED TV technology with HDR (High Dynamic Range imaging) capability and technologies like nanocrystal quantum dots for heavily expanded colour saturation.
LG hasn’t released any real details about its internal technology. If anything, the introduction of the new screen seems to be more a showcase of how much they are investing in radical future home entertainment technologies. LG is also experimenting with flexible smartphones and other types of displays
Panels like this highly flexible new model are an almost definite future avenue down which 4K and 8K TV technology will eventually move along. The existing models of ultra-thin 4K panels will probably seem positively clunky within the next few years.
One of the main ways OLED displays differ from LED-lit LCD displays is that they don’t need a backlight to brighten up the picture. Simply applying electrical current lights up each OLED pixel individually, which not only allows the displays to offer unparalleled black levels, rich colours, and vivid contrast, but also allows OLED displays to be remarkably thin: about as thin as an iPad.
While one of the most intriguing design traits of OLED technology is its ability to create ultra-thin, malleable displays, the design gets even thinner when one removes the brains of the TV from the equation, as LG Display has done with its wallpaper display prototype.
This new display technology may very well end up in wearable technology, automobile manufacturing and commercial applications before it ever establishes itself as the platform for televisions. However, as we’ve said here before, if we think it, it could become the TV of the future.
Now, OLEDs based on rare earth and transition metal complexes, particularly focused on europium, terbium, ruthenium and rhenium, perform reasonably well. However, a recent study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society points toward a possible alternative: inorganic-organic hybrid phosphors that are free of any rare earth metals (to reduce supply and cost risks) that can be used to create an array of colours. While dully organic LEDs and OLEDs already exist, they face challenges of lower quantum yield. Researchers in the Netherlands have apparently created a synthetic replacement for indium, an extremely rare metal that has become a necessary ingredient in solar cells and some OLEDs. The new material is made of carbon nanotubes and plastic nano particles. In the future, maybe a blend of inorganic and organic materials may offer the potential to be the best of all worlds: cheap to produce, less rare earth dependent, that can produce a clean, white light.
If you would like to read more, just click on http://4k.com/news/what-kind-of-4k-tvs-does-the-future-hold-lgs-fridge-magnet-oled-panel-gives-a-clue-79467/ or http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/personal-tech/lg-reveals-super-thin-oled-tv-that-sticks-to-walls-magnetically, or http://www.materials360online.com/newsDetails/49857.
Amazing what can be done with science and new materials. Rare Metals Matter!
Until soon… Ian
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