OLED: the Next Thing in Monitors

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What flat panel screens were to CRT, OLED monitors will be to flat panels -- and then some. Imagine a display sharper, thinner, and less expensive than you can get from a flat panel monitor. They're still over the horizon, but jkabaseball gives you the lowdown on OLED's bright future.

CRT monitors were the first consumer monitor. They are big, but offer great performance. Then along came LCD monitors. They are a lot thinner, but priced higher. Their performance isn't great, and decent performance costs a lot more. Take Apple’s monitors for example, they are among the best in the industry, but can cost over $2000.

Now imagine a screen better than that, thinner than that, and even less expensive. Sounds too good to be true? With OLED technology making its way into screens, this is what we can expect. OLED monitors are still on the horizon, but smaller devices sporting OLED screens are starting to trickle down into the market. Let’s take a look at what OLED is and how we will benefit from them.

How OLED works

The name gives us a good idea of how it works, Organic Light Emitting Display (OLED). The basis of OLED was discovered in 1985, over a decade before the first displays were even seen. A Kodak researcher by the name of Ching Tang noticed that if you put an electrical current through an organic material, it glowed green. This is where the idea behind OLED came from. The company who brings you your film, oddly enough, owns the patents for OLED.

There are a few different types of OLED which I will explain in the next section. Basically there is a layer of material that will conduct an electrical charge. The charge is sent into the organic material, which creates the light and the color. Since the organic material creates the light, there is no need for a back light. There must be blue, red, and green light-producing organic material to produce the different colors of the monitor.

There is one major problem hindering all OLED displays. The organic material that is used decreases its brightness with the amount of time it is on. The time is measured from the beginning to when the brightness decreases to half its original brightness. The red and green material is up to at least 20,000 hours, while the blue is falling short by a lot. Last year is was at a mere 1,000 hours, and development for longer lasting material is slow. This means that the monitor will quickly shift to a yellow tint. This is the biggest problem developers have with OLED technology.

Next: Types of OLED >>
 

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