Thin Film Tumbling

One of the big announcements at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show was a jumbo-sized OLED display from LG Electronics. Still a ways to go before we see a jumbo-sized OLED that people can actually afford. 

To answer a few questions posed by comments to the above article: 

• OLEDs are “organic” in the chemical sense, because the emissive materials are carbon-based polymers. There’s nothing particularly “green” about the materials used.
• Two major contributors to cost are the silicon backplane electronics — which are very similar to the backplanes used for LCDs — and the emissive polymers, which are very expensive and proprietary and only starting to be available in large volumes. 
• The terms OLED and AMOLED are often used interchangeably. “AM” refers to the active matrix driver electronics, which are generally faster than alternatives and work better for larger displays. 

(Insert snarky comment about the EBN editor’s understanding of this technology here.)