Plastic Electronics Driving An LCD Monitor 82
denisbergeron writes: "Philips Research develops the world's first display using polymeric semiconductors as pixel drivers, you can see the scientific paper here and a large public version here nothing realy new, but two beautifull picture of a 3.5 cm polymer display with a lot of other related pictures. No ready for the prime time, but almost there." "Polymeric" is just a fancy way to say "plastic" -- and the good news is that compared to silicon, "fewer production
stages and less stringent clean room conditions are required," thus making for cheaper display technology. Good news to me, and bad news to anyone who just plunked down $15,000-plus-tax for a big wall-mounted plasma TV.
Re:More info (Score:1)
Re:that's cool, but (Score:2)
Plasma screens lose potency over time, especially the color models. They will need to be replaced as well.
Re:Cheaper? (Score:2)
"plastic" isn't a synonym for "polymer". Some polymers are tar-like, starch is a polymer as is hydrofluoric acid, wood is a mix of several polymers.
And "plastic" is made from a wide range of monomers. The poly-ethylene in milk bottles isn't the same stuff as the poly-styrene in packing peanuts, nor the nylon in brush bristles. Just because something is a polymer doesn't mean you can easily make it from your plastic trash. I believe that many of the current crop of polymer semiconductors are polyenes such as polyacetylene, polyvinylidene fluoride, polythiophenes (sulfur containing rings linked together), poly-para-phenylen-vinylene, or poly-anilines. None of these are very close to most packaging plastics.
Re:Links to hi-res pictures (Score:1)
You know, I just now noticed that at least the third image there is out of focus. I think if I were going to offer high-resolution images, I'd make damn sure the photographer know what the hell he was doing.
Re:about that plasma thingy... (Score:2)
Side by side were 52" CRT for ~$6000 and a 52" plasma for $18000 (my conversion may be screwy, but the ratio was 1:3). Both running off (separate) DVDs.
The CRT looked superb, the plasma looked crap, from any distance.
So you're right, the "value" is certainly not real. (unless you're too short of space for the CRT, in which case buy a saller telly, fool!)
FatPhil
LEP Full Body Suit (Score:1)
You're at a bar - laying down some HEAVY pickup moves on a fabulous looking blonde when, all of the sudden, she screams, smacks you in the face and walks away.
Confused, you look down to discover that you're PANTS ARE GONE!!! AHHH!!!!!!! You quickly reach for your Microsoft WinGear(tm) LEP control panel (embedded in your wirstwatch) and promptly load the appropriate Armani dress slacks
Damn packet kiddies....
You jack into your car. Now to find out who DOSed your pants. Damn these IPv6 addys are hard to trace... AHA! Gotcha!
c:\load -fullsuit officer.gear
Done.
c:\load -carskin viper-cop.paint
Done.
Time for some fun....
Re:Cheaper? (Score:2)
They do, however, make great baby names.
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Sweet! (Score:1)
(If you don't know what I'm talking about, go find the article about Socket A coolers that Don't Kill.)
(You know how you come up with a good quip hours after a fight? It's kinda like me, I come up with a good post HOURS after moderators are looking anymore... Sigh.)
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Re:Cheaper? (Score:1)
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Re:LEP Full Body Suit (Score:1)
Done.
c:\load -carskin viper-cop.paint
Done.
Yeah, just don't confuse those arguments unless you feel like playing Go-Bots.
Re:$15000 for shitty TV! (Score:1)
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the power of backlights ... (Score:1)
Three words: "L"
OK, those aren't words, they're only letters. But they stand for words.
Now that white LEDs are widely available, I hope that some near generation of laptops will become truly powersaving by substituting LEDs for flourescent backlighting. Also, I don't know what the mimimum depth is for the tubes used in laptops, but I wonder if LEDS could also end up in space / weight savings.
idle thoughts of an idle fellow
timothy
sound like good news to me. (Score:1)
Any idea how much the equivalent is going to cost? I almost bought one of these but then i happened to notice i did have $15,000
Re:But how long? (Score:3)
How like Microsoft (Score:2)
While the technology is impressive, I couldn't help but notice the display was a single color. I'm sure we're all going to rush out to get flat panel B&W(er, black and yellow) TV sets...
Techy about plastic (Score:5)
"Polymeric" is just a fancy way to say "plastic"
Actually, polymeric does not mean plastic.
Plastic, strictly, means that you can shape the material by squeezeing it into shape. (As opposed to elastic, like a rubber band, that will go back to it's original shape when you stop squeezing it).
Polymeric means built up from lots of reapeating units. What are commonly called plastics (Polyethylene for example) are polymeric. But so are proteins. And lots of other things, that are't plastics.
To get marginally back on topic, just because this is made using a polymer does _not_ mean that it will be flexable. Perspex (Polymethylmethacrylate), the ploymer used in windows, is not flexable. Given that semiconductors require a crystaline structure, I don't think that these polymers will be plastic.
You can get flexable polymers that can do this sort of thing, but they are not semiconductors, they are called elecroluminescent polymers.
Different thing entierly
Re:Impressive. (Score:1)
I think you are missing something.
Having worked at our University paper and our town paper I know it can be difficult to get high-res photos off the web. It is a good thing to offer 300 dpi photos for download without having to request them. I think it is fair to tell them that you are a newspaper and you are using them so they can track their coverage on this. What would you do with a 300 dpi image anyways? It is big enough to be your background at 1200 pixels, but who would put those up as a background?
Re:More Interseting stuff- It's bendable! (Score:2)
Most polymers you will meet are, but that's not the same thing.
This stuff works by semiconducting polymers - that means they need to be crystaline polymers - a small subgroup - that are not 'bendy'.
You can get bendy screens, byt using polymers, but that's an entirely different group of polymers.
Really? (Score:1)
Do you say the same about people who can afford to buy expensive automobiles, yachts, or million dollar homes?
Re:Cheaper? (Score:1)
This is indeed a good idea, and in my native country it happens all the time. Unfortunately, it is severely hindered by the fact that there are essentially two types of plastic. One is the hard breakable kind (like a monitor-case) and the other is the soft bendable kind (like plastic-bags). To most people it's just plastic, and it gets thrown in one big pile. The bad news is that by mixing the two kinds you basically get bendable breakable plastics - bends as easily as a plastic bag, but breaks the minute it bends.
The solution would be to have it sorted, but since this is almost impossible to do automatically, it would require that you sort the plastics yourself. Since this requires a little thinking and effort, Joe Random Sixpack is certainly not going to bother with it.
Re:Screen savers are toys (Score:1)
Not Quite... (Score:1)
Re:about that plasma thingy... (Score:1)
Improtant Breakthrough - Not Quite (Score:1)
This article [zdnet.com.au] in zdnet Australia has some of the details, and describes the fact the the displays are made with a "specialty printer that can shoot red, blue and green polymer inks ... from three separate cartridges, then mix with a fourth cartridge that contains a conductive polymer. The printer "prints" small drops of the four inks onto a thin screen, which combined with electrodes will make an LEP display.", says that these displays will have about 200dpi and states that "Best of all, Seiko-Epson is working on a mammoth printer that will create screens 15 feet across with no seams and without the staggering yield problems that plague LCD technology."
At the moment these displays are created sandwiched in glass, but to be released commercially, they need to be able to be set in plastic. Still mighty impressive. The CDT website [cdtltd.co.uk] has a lot of technical papers on how these LEP's work, and interesting read.
Re:$15000 for shitty TV! (Score:1)
Re:Improtant Breakthrough - Not Quite (Score:1)
LCD thingys (Score:1)
Re:LEP Full Body Suit (Score:1)
Re:Power consumption? (Score:1)
Anyone who plunks down $15K for a new TV.... (Score:2)
new tech. Read a book or something.
Power consumption? (Score:4)
Better yet, will they eventually make a 60" monitor of the stuff to put on the wall? Q3 on a giant screen like that might be nice - assuming they got the resolution to about 2400x1800 or so...
about that plasma thingy... (Score:2)
Glad I got out of that deal when I could. Should've known that Circuit City guy was trying to rip me a new a-hole...
Come on guys, $15,000 for a TV? How much do you watch this crap anyway? Buffy only comes on so many times a week!
Hope it comes out (Score:1)
Cheaper? (Score:1)
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Re:Cheaper? (Score:2)
Re:Power consumption? (Score:3)
How much power does it take? Will it be the next wave of laptop/PDA monitors?
I may have just made this up, but I seem to remember from reading up on fp displays a couple of years ago that polymer based displays would maintain the picture when switched off. So, if the image wasn't changing (like most of a computer display), power consumption would be very low. I suppose an application like Q3 would use rather more power, unless you just stood still.
A reloadable flexible display may even replace the daily newspaper one day
This seems to support this, as a newspaper wouldn't be very useful if you had to recharge the batteries to carry on reading an article.
But how long? (Score:4)
It is also possible, in principle, to print the switches on a roll of plastic foil in a continuous process.
It sounds so cool.. but it looks like they're trying to hedge their bets and not really give any idea of when this could really work. Sounds like flexible flat-panel type displays are still a long ways off.
*sigh* And I was so looking forward to getting one, too...
More Interseting stuff- It's bendable! (Score:5)
I think its possible.
This also brings cool,cool applications into my mind. If I had a TV - T-shirt, I could have a video cam on my back and show It up front. In effect, I'm Invisible!!! hahahah!
But, definitely, Plastics are the future, and If one projects a little bit further, you'll see we're all heading towards mimicking nature.
"Science fiction is nothing but Reality in Future tense"
(do check out http://iotaspace.net )
Re:Cheaper? (Score:2)
Since plastic is EVERYWHERE right now
That's rather a short term approach isn't it? I suppose the devices themselves could be recycled more simply than current display technologies though.
Re:Cheaper? (Score:1)
$15000 for shitty TV! (Score:1)
I saw an advertising where a couple had a flat TV installed to the ceiling over their bed. I wonder how the TV was getting the necessary juice and antenna.
Re:More Interseting stuff- It's bendable! (Score:1)
Don't we already do that and even pay for the privilege (Hilfiger, Swooshstika, etc.)?
Re:Cheaper? (Score:2)
Someday soon, hopefully, we'll grow most of our plastics. I think there is a good chance that in 20-30 years we will use biotechnology to transform atmospheric carbon dioxide into carbon polymer chains of any kind we need. After all, plants to this already, turning CO2 into sugar and cellulose. We just need them to build different molecules for us.
This has already been demonstrated, though the technology isn't ready for prime time.
http://www.monsantoindia.com/news/archives/octo
(yes I am too lazy to hyperlink that. deal with it.)
Is it more transparent than amorphous silicon? (Score:2)
If this polymer semiconductor is more transparent than amorphous silicon this could result in significant power savings on the backlight to achieve the same brightness.
You might remember this article [vnunet.com] and the slashdot discussion [slashdot.org] about it claiming that the Transmeta processor improve battry life help that much because the display is the real power hog. Any improvement in display power consumption will be very much welcomed.
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Re:Big Deal (Score:1)
Re:Techy about plastic (Score:1)
Electroluminescent polymers most certainly are semiconductors. Look at the band structure for any poly(paraphenylene vinylene) or derivative. You get a semiconducting molecule because of the pi-electron overlap, or conjugation, along the backbone. No crystallinity is required.
Flexible displays were first made a long time ago (look up the June issue of Science from 1995). As the electroluminescent polymers *are* plastic, by using a flexible (PET) substrate to build the display on, the outcome is a flexible display. Most of the current research is to improve the lifetime of the flexible displays and make the move to full color.
Screen savers are toys (Score:2)
Can it be reflective? (Score:2)
Anyone who's had the pleasure of doing color calibration between their monitor, scanner, and printer will realize the value of being able to view an image as reflective, thereby eliminating the large differences in the RGB gamut and the CMYK gamut.
Links to hi-res pictures (Score:5)
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Correction, and think BIG (Score:2)
I couldn't help but notice the display was a single color.
That bothered me, too, but when I clicked on the link to download a high-rez version of the picture, I noticed another picture available [philips.com] whose caption described a technique for achieving color displays.
The possibilities of a flexible display are intriguing: Imagine a large-form-factor display, say 4' by 3', that you could unroll like a windowshade or a portable film projection screen. And if this stuff is orders of magnitude cheaper than LCD, maybe I'll be able to have a really huge desktop (1.6 m x 1.2 m) that's really my desktop! :o)
Bah! (Score:1)
Anyone who can "plunk" $15,000 down to buy a TV is going to hang around and wait for the price to drop or wait for impending technology... They want it now and the got the $$$. When (if) this technology takes off, I'm sure they'll go out and spend another $15k to get one of them too...
The plasma screen can then be consigned to its other major use... replicating modern art in a dingy hallway somewhere...
Re:cambridge firm actualy do this (Score:1)
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It's a cost thing (Score:2)
Maybe the fabrication cost problem will be cracked. But you can't tell from a demo of an experimental prototype.
Re:I want my LEP! (Score:1)
For predator transparency, you'd also need an array of cameras and complex control algorithms to allow others see through you. Maybe they'll come up with polymer CCDs as well.. ;}
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Re:Impressive. (Score:1)
Re:Light Emitting fashion (Score:1)
Re:that's cool, but (Score:1)
The light-emitting elements will also be significantly cheaper, and as has been pointed out, will require less power, fewer manufacturing steps, and will be capable of creating much larger displays in the future than Plasma or any other silicon-based technology:Light-emitting polymers broaden display options [electronicproducts.com]. In addition, companies like Cambridge Display Technology [cdtltd.co.uk] are working on ink-jettable organic light-emitting polymer technology that will allow the manufacture of cheap displays of any size, allowing entire animated video billboards.
I'd pay $500 every 3-5 years for a 60-inch(or larger) screen.
Impressive. (Score:4)
not_cub
Re:More Interseting stuff- It's bendable! (Score:1)
and in the far future, your clothes will be alive, able to respond to kind words or slaps. Or maybe you could forget to feed them and tehy woudl die on you.
Re:Cheaper? (Score:2)
Alternatives (as the poster below my first message mentioned) such as creating plastics from other sources could also be used.
Re:Cheaper? (Score:2)
Wearable and Sci-Fi (Score:2)
It is actually a cool think to imagine ourselves wearing light flexible plastic screens that'll just display fashioned pictures, colors or drawing and will be able to coordinate their aspect to the others detected clothes (The network would then be the suit). This also reminds me of Fantastic Four's unstable molecul clothes that changed of aspect (and size but this doesn't apply here) on their carrier.
Finally, imagine if we get "hacked" and then display some advertising on our back without even noticing it.
Will the future introduce us to an application of the push technology where ladies will subscribe to fashion-channel in order (1) never to wear the same-looking clothes (2) never wearing the same as the other channel subscriber ?
2) more serious bit:
Also about wearable, does this technology allow the development of flexible touchscreen ?
This'd sure be a huge technology leap.
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More info (Score:1)
cambridge firm actualy do this (Score:1)
light emmiting polymers (LEP)
old hat they are building so that they can deliver a process to partners NOW
they aim @ doing TV + Mob phone screens full colour and HD with low power
regards
john jones
(a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
Nice to see I'm not the only one dreaming.... :) (Score:1)
My version of the article is at http://iotaspace.net
Re:Power consumption? (Score:1)
So what happens to screen savers: would they no longer be needed?
Just thinking of the scene in Total Recall (perhaps?) where the view of outside is in fact a screen, which when Shazza pressed the remote goes to the News or whatever, so could the picture it maintains be something similar to this 'view'?
Military Applications (Score:1)
Re:Screen savers are toys (Score:1)
Mark the original comment down as 'Lack of caffeine'.
Re:$15000 for shitty TV! (Score:1)
Must have hit a sore spot (Score:2)
Probably directly related to you're inability to take responsibility for your actions(AC post).
Re:about that plasma thingy... (Score:2)
Decent plasmas are finally coming out, but it will be a while before all the crappy ones are out of the pipeline.
The main problem is that the first and second generation plasmas could not produce 24-bits worth of color. I'm not sure what their actual bit-depth was, but you could see banding everywhere, in every color. Most plasma displays looked like a very bad, 1980s GIF. Overly simple dither patterns didn't really help the second generation sets much.
These sets have never been about quality. They have been for rich people to have something to hang on the wall and impress their friends - like in that idiotic Philips commercial with the hip, young, rich couple holding this very heavy, fragile and expensive thing and moving it all around their apartment before finally hanging it on the ceiling (with a tiny warning telling you not to do that.)
If you want a good picture on a wall, get a projector.
Re:More Interseting stuff- It's bendable! (Score:2)
And then a 1GB graphics card to drive it :-)
Can this give me that? (it sort of looks that way!)
I want my LEP! (Score:1)
And for all you naysayers...I have a hard time picturing all the possible uses for this stuff, should it be possible to make it bendable. My prediction is that LEPs are going to change the appearance of the whole world.
Possibility 1: LEP wallpaper; imagine you want to change the color of your room...suddenly your whole house is as customizable as your computer's desktop...housethemes.org anyone? how about carthemes.org?
Possibility 2: The chameleon suit from predator, that instantly becomes any outfit you want it to be.
Possibility 3: the one-page daily newspaper, with every page in full color, fully customizable.
Not to mention all the advertising possibilites. ugh, distracting full motion billboards everywhere you go.
Epson has ALREADY developed a printer that will print RGB LEPs onto a sheet of glass...and Nokia should be releasing phones with the new LEP (full-color) screens shortly.
This [cdtltd.co.uk] is the link for the company that has created the process.
I read it differently (Score:2)
I interpret that as a large area of a single color, not multiple colors, because it's between a single pair of electrodes.
Re:Must have hit a sore spot (Score:1)
Realdolls don't have sore spots. They're made out of plastic.
Re:Pfft.. $15,000 (Score:1)
You can get [infocus.com] a 1k lumen XGA-resolution projector from Infocus [infocus.com], weighing 4.8 lbs, for about $6000.
Re:$15000 for shitty TV! (Score:1)
I used to have a little Sony video projector. I used to play video games on my ceiling. I guess I kind of missed the boat never putting pr0n up there, huh?
Something a bit similar (Score:2)
that's cool, but (Score:4)
Re:Cheaper? (Score:1)
Re:More info (Score:1)
Re:Pfft.. $15,000 (Score:1)
Yeah, but the plasma TV is going to have a higer contrast ratio, and thus can be viewed with more ambient light in the room. It will also not be as noisy as the projector (no big-ass heat/light source to cool with a loud fan).