Jack Schofield
Plastic television and computer screens could be printed out by the yard using technology from Cambridge University and its development partner Seiko-Epson, a large Japanese manufacturer of computer printers. And because plastic screens can be flexible, TV sets could be hung on the wall and rolled up afterwards.
The new screens are based on light-emitting polymers (LEPs) developed at the university in 1989. LEPs should result in display screens that are lighter, thinner and sharper than the liquid crystal displays (LCDs) commonly used in portable phones, electronic organisers, pocket-sized TV sets and similar products.
Ultimately, Cambridge University is aiming at the $20-billion market for computer graphics display screens, and puts the “total addressable market” at about $40- billion.
Cambridge Display Technology’s prototype TV screen is monochrome and tiny – only 50mm across and 2mm thick – but the company’s CEO Daniel Chapchal hopes to have 25cm full- colour screens to show by the end of this year. His confidence is based on the scalability of the production process. Seiko-Epson can print the screen’s colour pixels using a soluble LEP and its ink-jet printing technologies.
There are still questions to be answered about whether the plastic screens will prove durable and long-lasting enough to displace LCDs or even cathode-ray tubes, but the first products are due to reach the market this year, starting with a Philips mobile phone. As well as Philips, the technology has been licensed to the US company Uniax and Germany’s Hoechst AG. Hoechst manufactures the poly p-phenylene- vinylene used to make the screen.