Cambridge's FlexEnable folds display borders for bezel-less screen
Flexible electronics company FlexEnable has worked out how to fold the borders behind a gadget’s display for the first time.
The Cambridge Science Park-based firm’s breakthrough provides a completely new approach to bezel-less screens that cannot be achieved with glass displays.
The ultra-narrow border organic LCD (OLCD) has been developed by exploiting the truly flexible nature of the organic thin-film transistors (OTFTs) on which OLCD is based, thereby providing “a completely new approach to bezel-less screens that cannot be achieved with glass displays”.
FlexEnable was founded in 2015. Its origins lie in the university’s world-famous Cavendish Laboratory.
The company taps into the world’s leading flexible electronics engineering talent, with collective experience of more than 700 engineering years and holding more than 650 patents.
On the back of this ready-made Cambridge ecosystem FlexEnable has fast become the leader in the development and industrialisation of flexible organic electronics. Its new transistor technology enables glass-free, low-cost, small and large-area electronics which are wrappable, shapeable, ultra-thin, lightweight and shatterproof.
OLCD, which offers the same quality and performance as traditional glass LCDs, can bring unique benefits to notebooks, tablets, TVs and monitors by responding to the increasing demand for larger displays with smaller-to-no borders. The bezel size allowed by OLCD is independent of the display size or resolution, and the OLCD technology itself is cost-effectively scalable to large display sizes. Moreover, OLCD can make a notebook up to 100g lighter and 0.5mm thinner.
CEO Chuck Milligan said: “By exploiting the unique properties of FlexEnable’s organic transistors platform, we have proven that it can also provide a route to borderless displays and thus further expand the applications of thin, light and conformable OLCDs.
“For example, removing the borders of the display allows a larger screen to fit into the same size notebook. This breakthrough enables us to address a multi-billion display market for notebooks, tablets, monitors and TVs as well as surface-integrated displays for automotive interiors.”
OLCD can be easily curved and shaped to enable new form factors in a wide range of products including consumer electronics, smart home devices, automotive displays and beyond. The technology is being implemented into existing manufacturing lines in Asia and is due to be in production next year.
