The use of plastic OLED would allow for extra flexibility, but the smartphone won't be foldable.
The problem might be traced back to the first
use of plastic OLED, or P - OLED, which uses a plastic substrate instead of glass to make it more deformable.
Not exact matches
University
of Utah physicists
used this kind
of OLED — basically a
plastic LED instead
of a conventional silicon semiconductor LED — to show that they could read the subatomic «spins» in the center or nuclei
of hydrogen isotopes and
use those spins to control current to the
OLED.
While conventional LEDs
use silicon semiconductors,
OLEDs in some
of the latest cell phones and TVs are made with «pi - conjugated polymers,» which are
plastic - like, organic semiconductors made
of a chain
of repeating molecular units.
is similar, but its
OLED display is made
using a new flexible
plastic substrate, so that it can bend around on both sides
of the phone to provide two new curved display areas that can be viewed from both the front or the sides, and also when the phone is placed face down.
uses an 18:9
plastic OLED panel, courtesy
of LG, which fills most
of the phone's frame.
The panel itself will be quite strong, thanks to the
use of stronger
plastic substrate instead
of a glass base on traditional
OLED panels.
The phone maker claims that because it is
using plastic -
OLED, the edges
of its device's display can be curved ensuring a more ergonomic grip and better feel in the hand.
The
use of plastic substrates has already allowed Samsung and LG to produce curved
OLED panels, and the next evolution will be increasing this flexibility and panel durability to survive the stresses
of repeated bending and flexing.
While the first wave
of OLED panels were built
using glass substrates, the desire for more interesting form factors has seen this layer move over to
use more flexible
plastic components.