By Asim Waqar
The title sure sounds crazy, but remember that 15 years ago, printing your photographs at home was unheard of. So hear me out.
I’m sure you’re familiar (if you are a regular of this or any other tech blog) with the ubiquitous and somewhat revolutionary Light Emitting Diodes (LED), right? After the LEDs, we were introduced to the Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLED), a thin-film LED whose benefits include high flexibility and lack of backlight requirements. Now, we have the PLED!
Among the marvels of the Polymer Light Emitting Diode is that the polymers it is made of can be laid down much like the way ink-jet printers lay ink. Seiko Epson has already demonstrated a 40 inch printed display!
UK based Cambridge Display Technologies (CDT) is a pioneer when it comes to PLEDs, and their General Manager, Ian Chao, believes that we may see printed displays make it to retail shelves by 2007.
Relatively low brightness and lifetime currently limit commercialization to small mobile sized displays. This being fairly new technology, I’d bet overcoming these limitations is just a matter of time.
Also, I wonder just how this is going to change the business card industry…
Check out the CDT GM’s interview at Digitimes
For more on PLED’s, visit the CDT homepage here
