Flexible screen is less than 1mm thick

11/06/2009 by David Slade.

When claims of a revolutionary 110”, highly flexible display, set to emerge from Georgia, USA, reached our ears at Davmark. We caught up with the creator, Nanolumens. The company claims its giant portable display will be less than one millimetre thick and weigh no more than 45kg. A video provides a demonstration of the new technology.

John Wilson, president of the company said: “Nanolumens has a core technology that permits it to bring the best of display technology to a flexible format. We have a fairly extensive patent portfolio, almost 50 patents issued and filed that cover a very innovative set of technologies that allow us to bring flexibility to display technologies,” he continued to explain.

The company has already built a number of prototypes based on the technology but the big news is it plans to market a very large display in about one year’s time. “It will be very lightweight and large for markets primarily in out-of-home advertising, digital signage, control room and large format business-to-business applications,” Wilson confirmed.

Wilson and the team at Nanolumens seem to have done their homework. “Our view is that much of the industry, particularly in the out-of-home advertising industry, is shifting to digital and there’s a great deal of that market that would be perfectly fine for a 42” or a 50” LCD display that is rigid and just put up on the wall,” he asserts. “But, there are an incredible number of applications where either a curved wall or a bend around a column or a very large space that is high up and needs a hanging screen. That is the market we are planning to pursue.

“The fact the technology is flexible is an achievement in its own right. The fact that it continues to operate and run as it’s transported from place to place because it’s actually a portable device is also significant so we’ve been able to share it with both customers and strategic partners.”

The company was created specifically to get into the business of making flexible displays for these markets. “We have a distinguished group of display veterans associated with the company who either advise us or provide engineering services or guidance in terms of business. Our technology allows us to bring the attributes of rigid devices into a flexible format that works – we think that’s critical for a robust device that will survive the challenges of the marketplace.”

Wilson and CEO of Nanolumens, Richard Cope, have an impressive background between them, having run numerous research and development enterprises. “[Cope] was a programme manager for the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency which is one of the premier research agencies in the world,” adds Wilson.

“We view the flexible display world as the start of a new emerging industry.” Wilson concludes. “There are a lot of companies working on the challenges of flexible imaging systems. Some working on small wearable devices or small clothing integrated devices. We chose the large format professional market as we felt was represented higher value and was immediately accessible”

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