Flexible LED displays with military applications

A new range of Organic LED (OLED) displays are being developed in America, to cater to the needs of the armed forces, according to a report from Electronics Weekly.

The screens are being created by researchers at the Flexible Display Centre, which is based at Arizona State University.

In a statement, the team working on the project said that the US DoD was looking to invest in OLED displays which are not only very flexible, but also able to display moving images in full colour.

For the purposes of use in the armed forces, a display must be far more rugged and hard wearing than a typical screen encountered on the commercial market.

Making an LED display flexible will naturally endow it with added toughness, since it will be harder to damage it and much easier to install and store it. You could even integrate this kind of lightweight display into clothing, if such a setup was required.

Spokesperson Nick Colaneri, said that part of the reason that the researchers had been so successful was that they were not trying to reinvent the wheel and were, instead, harnessing existing techniques for manufacture, which make it much simpler to create detailed LED displays able to operate in extreme conditions.

The Flexible Display Centre is actually something that has been founded and operated in conjunction with the armed forces in America, with plenty of funding being provided by the government to speed up the process of creating new LED technologies.

The LED displays that have been developed measure 7.4 inches across the diagonal and will be going in front of an industry audience during the SID Display Week event this month, although you will of course need to head to Boston, Massachusetts, to see it in action.