Justin Kahn
Posts: 752 +6
We have been hearing a lot about flexible displays over the past few years, but there haven't been any free-standing flexible products to hit the market just yet. Many suggest flexible display technology just isn't ready for mass production just yet so many of the major manufacturers are still just in the prototype phase. But now, a company known as Kateeva is introducing manufacturing equipment that might actually allow flexible displays to hit the market in a major way.
The OLEDs used in flexible displays require protection from things like water vapor and oxygen molecules at all times. Experts say that just a tiny amount of either can destroy the screen, so requirements for protection can be quite significant, a process Kateeva is looking to reduce in price and increase in efficiency.
The "flexible" display technology already available in Samsung phones, for example, are fixed and can't be bent. Samsung said it does not utilize a protection layer of this nature in those products.
The company's industrial printers can apparently cut costs in half and produce results at a faster pace. The room-sized printers, expected to begin shipping later this year, fit in with existing production lines as well. According to reports, just about every manufacturer is working on some kind of foldable or flexible display, so it looks as though early to mid 2015 is when the first products using this tech may begin to surface.
