Japanese electronics giant Sony said Wednesday it had developed what it called “the world’s first” prototype flexible colour video screen that is small enough to be rolled around a pencil.<\/p>\n
The screen consists of an ultra-thin flexible material covered in organic semiconductors, potentially pointing to a future of flexible mobile devices, television, electronic newspapers and magazines.<\/p>\n
“Even after 1,000 cycles of repeatedly rolling-up and stretching the display, there was no clear degradation in the display’s ability to reproduce moving images”, Sony said of its flexible Organic Light Emitting Display (OLED).<\/p>\n
Sony is not the only Japanese firm developing long-lasting flexible displays, with public broadcaster NHK having also worked on similar techniques in recent years.<\/p>\n
Japan’s department of New Energy and Industrial Technologies (Nedo) is also leading a research programme in a bid to create a manufacturing chain for the displays similar to the way newspapers are printed.<\/p>\n
The prototype screen will be presented Thursday at a conference on the sidelines of the Society for Information Display (SID) exhibition in the US city of Seattle, Sony said.<\/p>\n