Ben Preiss
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At the end of the year Sony will begin selling the first of a new category of OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) TVs that will offer unprecedented color quality, contrast and wide viewing angles in a thinner package. What’s the downside? A short lifespan, the OLEDs degrade relatively quickly with about a tenth the lifespan of LCD’s.  The Sony XEL-1 will be the world’s first commercially available OLED screen when it hits the Japanese market at the end of the year – but it will be the beginning of an exciting new era of TV technology that will eventually offer low-cost, low-consumption TVs with exceptional viewing characteristics and screens so thin they can be rolled up for storage.
OLED technology has its origins in a number of 1950s and 60s research projects which showed that certain organic materials would produce electroluminescence when exposed to AC power. Different colored organic luminescents are arranged in a matrix to form an OLED screen.
Because these organic chemicals are themselves luminescent, an OLED screen doesn’t need a backlight like an LCD screen does – so it uses far less power, and can show a “true” black colour.
The nanometer-thick luminescent layer can be easily and cheaply produced – an OLED screen can literally be printed onto a substrate material using an inkjet or screen printing technique – which opens up the ability to create flexible screens, or even screens embedded in clothing.
(gizmag)References: avreview, gizmag Filed In: |
