With a surprise announcement, Royole anticipates the future of displays and consequently of all technology: here is the first super flexible micro LED.
Giuseppe Croce Journalist
Peppe Croce, journalist since 2008, deals with electronic devices and new technologies applied to the automotive world. He joined Libero Tecnologia in 2018.
The future is flexible displays, that's the direction technology is moving towards. The fact that giants of the caliber of Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi and others, have been moving for some time with the various "book" smartphones and renew the offer from year to year only confirms what is a trend that in the future will become the norm.
The problems to which any innovation that challenges the past is subject, such as the fragility of the panels and the cost still too high, must be solved, but it is a matter of time. Time passes and research, meanwhile, advances. This is demonstrated by Royole Corporation, a company that had already made headlines in 2018 for being the first to bring to market a smartphone with a flexible display, the Royole FlexPai. And even four years earlier, in 2014, Royole made headlines for developing the world's thinnest flexible color display, as well as filing more than 80 patents on flexible technologies and micro LED panels over the years.
The flexible micro LED display of the future
And it's precisely because of micro LED panels that Royole is back in the global tech news pages today with a crackling announcement. The Shenzhen-based company has created a new type of micro LED display that can be freely molded into three-dimensional shapes.
The possible applications are potentially endless. They range from wearable devices to completely new uses, such as on car windshields. Royole's demonstration panel made it clear that the design is extremely flexible and can be used in any field.
Royole's first flexible micro-LED panel is 2.7 inches diagonal and 96 x 60 pixels, has 130 percent stretchability and can flex up to 40 degrees. Perhaps more appreciable are the properties that came out of the testing phase, in which the new panel proved that it can be, needless to say, bent and rolled, as well as twisted, pulled and deformed without damage.
This first generation of extremely flexible micro LEDs, Royole said, can also achieve a density of 120 ppi or pixels per inch. Obviously, this is a far cry from today's standards, where even a hundred-euro smartphone has a 300 or 400 ppi screen, but this is just the beginning of a base that has plenty of room for development.
On the sidelines of the announcement, Royole CEO and president Bill Liu expressed his satisfaction:
"The development in the direction of stretchable displays that are compatible with today's industrial processes is a sign of the exponential growth the flexible electronics industry is experiencing.
Royole continues to lead innovation on the flexible panel front, with technologies that will mark the next frontier of technical advancement by driving unprecedented applications and form factors in both augmented and virtual reality, in terms of wearable devices, biomedical applications, vehicle design and more."