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Plastic Electronics Driving An LCD Monitor
denisbergeron writes: "Philips Research develops the world's first display using polymeric semiconductors as pixel drivers, you can see the scientific paper here and a large public version here nothing realy new, but two beautifull picture of a 3.5 cm polymer display with a lot of other related pictures. No ready for the prime time, but almost there." "Polymeric" is just a fancy way to say "plastic" -- and the good news is that compared to silicon, "fewer production
stages and less stringent clean room conditions are required," thus making for cheaper display technology. Good news to me, and bad news to anyone who just plunked down $15,000-plus-tax for a big wall-mounted plasma TV.
Plasma screens lose potency over time, especially the color models. They will need to be replaced as well.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"plastic" isn't a synonym for "polymer". Some polymers are tar-like, starch is a polymer as is hydrofluoric acid, wood is a mix of several polymers.
And "plastic" is made from a wide range of monomers. The poly-ethylene in milk bottles isn't the same stuff as the poly-styrene in packing peanuts, nor the nylon in brush bristles. Just because something is a polymer doesn't mean you can easily make it from your plastic trash. I believe that many of the current crop of polymer semiconductors are polyenes such as polyacetylene, polyvinylidene fluoride, polythiophenes (sulfur containing rings linked together), poly-para-phenylen-vinylene, or poly-anilines. None of these are very close to most packaging plastics.
Last weekend I was in the biggest electronics "boutique" in town, erm, the country.
Side by side were 52" CRT for ~$6000 and a 52" plasma for $18000 (my conversion may be screwy, but the ratio was 1:3). Both running off (separate) DVDs.
The CRT looked superb, the plasma looked crap, from any distance.
So you're right, the "value" is certainly not real. (unless you're too short of space for the CRT, in which case buy a saller telly, fool!)
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
They do, however, make great baby names.
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Liberty uber alles.
Using LEP (Light-Emitting-Polymers rather than polymeric circuits for LCD), Espon has been able to mass-produce material by adapting its inkjet technology.
While the technology is impressive, I couldn't help but notice the display was a single color. I'm sure we're all going to rush out to get flat panel B&W(er, black and yellow) TV sets...
[Yes this is slightly OT. But it's still science.]
"Polymeric" is just a fancy way to say "plastic"
Actually, polymeric does not mean plastic.
Plastic, strictly, means that you can shape the material by squeezeing it into shape. (As opposed to elastic, like a rubber band, that will go back to it's original shape when you stop squeezing it).
Polymeric means built up from lots of reapeating units. What are commonly called plastics (Polyethylene for example) are polymeric. But so are proteins. And lots of other things, that are't plastics.
To get marginally back on topic, just because this is made using a polymer does _not_ mean that it will be flexable. Perspex (Polymethylmethacrylate), the ploymer used in windows, is not flexable. Given that semiconductors require a crystaline structure, I don't think that these polymers will be plastic.
You can get flexable polymers that can do this sort of thing, but they are not semiconductors, they are called elecroluminescent polymers.
Different thing entierly
Um, sorry try again. Most polymers are not bendable.
Most polymers you will meet are, but that's not the same thing.
This stuff works by semiconducting polymers - that means they need to be crystaline polymers - a small subgroup - that are not 'bendy'.
You can get bendy screens, byt using polymers, but that's an entirely different group of polymers.
...has bigger problems than keeping up with :(
new tech. Read a book or something.
How much power does it take? Will it be the next wave of laptop/PDA monitors?
Better yet, will they eventually make a 60" monitor of the stuff to put on the wall? Q3 on a giant screen like that might be nice - assuming they got the resolution to about 2400x1800 or so...
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
WHEW!
:)
Glad I got out of that deal when I could. Should've known that Circuit City guy was trying to rip me a new a-hole...
Come on guys, $15,000 for a TV? How much do you watch this crap anyway? Buffy only comes on so many times a week!
http://kered.org
Hmmm...I was wondering the same thing. Since plastic is EVERYWHERE right now, it would be kinda cool to see them start using recyclables. Talk about a green product! Would be cool to think that my 2L soda bottle would eventually become a TV. Materials would be cheaper because there is so much plastic out there right now.
Sig it.
It is also possible, in principle, to print the switches on a roll of plastic foil in a continuous process.
It sounds so cool.. but it looks like they're trying to hedge their bets and not really give any idea of when this could really work. Sounds like flexible flat-panel type displays are still a long ways off.
*sigh* And I was so looking forward to getting one, too...
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
By definition, most polymers(plastics) are bendable. Sincethere is no rigidity like silicon here, I suppose we could have televisions or computer screens wrapped on Basket balls.
I think its possible.
This also brings cool,cool applications into my mind. If I had a TV - T-shirt, I could have a video cam on my back and show It up front. In effect, I'm Invisible!!! hahahah!
But, definitely, Plastics are the future, and If one projects a little bit further, you'll see we're all heading towards mimicking nature.
"Science fiction is nothing but Reality in Future tense"
(do check out http://iotaspace.net )
Since plastic is EVERYWHERE right now
That's rather a short term approach isn't it? I suppose the devices themselves could be recycled more simply than current display technologies though.
Someday soon, hopefully, we'll grow most of our plastics. I think there is a good chance that in 20-30 years we will use biotechnology to transform atmospheric carbon dioxide into carbon polymer chains of any kind we need. After all, plants to this already, turning CO2 into sugar and cellulose. We just need them to build different molecules for us.
This has already been demonstrated, though the technology isn't ready for prime time.
http://www.monsantoindia.com/news/archives/octo
(yes I am too lazy to hyperlink that. deal with it.)
Current active matrix displays use amorphous silicon thin film transistors as pixel drivers. This means that the backlight has to pass through both the silicon film and the liquid crystal itself. The combined attenuation is quite high and a very bright backlight is required.
If this polymer semiconductor is more transparent than amorphous silicon this could result in significant power savings on the backlight to achieve the same brightness.
You might remember this article and the slashdot discussion about it claiming that the Transmeta processor improve battry life help that much because the display is the real power hog. Any improvement in display power consumption will be very much welcomed.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Where have you been? Screen savers have been unnecessarily on modern monitors for years now. People just like having them.
Can the display be reflective instead of emitting? I think a display will be much less power consuming if it doesn't have to generate light. A reflective surface comes with several advantages: near-perfect replication of hardcopy colors, static images are easier to keep (photographs), cool body armor (or tank armor) that just shows the image behind it rather than emitting the scene behind it.
Anyone who's had the pleasure of doing color calibration between their monitor, scanner, and printer will realize the value of being able to view an image as reflective, thereby eliminating the large differences in the RGB gamut and the CMYK gamut.
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Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
I couldn't help but notice the display was a single color.
That bothered me, too, but when I clicked on the link to download a high-rez version of the picture, I noticed another picture available whose caption described a technique for achieving color displays.
The possibilities of a flexible display are intriguing: Imagine a large-form-factor display, say 4' by 3', that you could unroll like a windowshade or a portable film projection screen. And if this stuff is orders of magnitude cheaper than LCD, maybe I'll be able to have a really huge desktop (1.6 m x 1.2 m) that's really my desktop! :o)
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
Maybe the fabrication cost problem will be cracked. But you can't tell from a demo of an experimental prototype.
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
True, but what I guess what I was getting at was that we need plastic for everyday items such as bottles, parts, etc..so the industry will create it. Instead of throwing all of that out into landfills, we could put it back to good use again. I would imagine that if (if being the key word here) this would be a seamless cycle, the dependence on oil would decrease as we could just reuse all the plastics. Consider the lifecycle of the products...milk jugs are used within a month and then thrown out again. Tv's, granted would take longer to reach the end of their lives, but eventually they would return to the manufacturors.
Alternatives (as the poster below my first message mentioned) such as creating plastics from other sources could also be used.
Sig it.
Well, the cost of electronics is not determined by the cost of the base material. It's the manufacturing process that makes it expensive. Polymer electronics can be screen printed, a process which is a lot cheaper than using purified silicon, which is doted through vacuum deposition and several masking/etching stages. Potentially, the process is so cheap you can have disposable displays posted as a billboard (I didn't say it would make our world a better one...) And I assume these polymers could be synthesized from renewable resources, like extra vergine olive oil, if we're out of petroleum.
1) odd idea:
It is actually a cool think to imagine ourselves wearing light flexible plastic screens that'll just display fashioned pictures, colors or drawing and will be able to coordinate their aspect to the others detected clothes (The network would then be the suit). This also reminds me of Fantastic Four's unstable molecul clothes that changed of aspect (and size but this doesn't apply here) on their carrier.
Finally, imagine if we get "hacked" and then display some advertising on our back without even noticing it.
Will the future introduce us to an application of the push technology where ladies will subscribe to fashion-channel in order (1) never to wear the same-looking clothes (2) never wearing the same as the other channel subscriber ?
2) more serious bit:
Also about wearable, does this technology allow the development of flexible touchscreen ?
This'd sure be a huge technology leap.
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
Probably directly related to you're inability to take responsibility for your actions(AC post).
I interpret that as a large area of a single color, not multiple colors, because it's between a single pair of electrodes.
There is some quite cool work going on in Edinburgh Uni making very small very high definition colour screens which we could see in products soon.
there is one thing to consider when using plastic instead of silicon. A lot of people like to leave their tv's and even their monitors on for an extended period of time. The problem there is that electronic equipment heats up the longer it is left running. Fans or no fans, if some of the internal parts, like transistors, are plastic they will heat up. The downfall to this is, even though they are going to be cheaper, they may have to be replaced more often. Where is the efficiency in that? Yes I know it would be a lot more resonable then getting a plasma screen, because they are way over priced. I would rather pay the extra to have the silicon parts then to have something that may not last very long.