Engineers from South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology have created a flexible OLED display, it can change shape and work as a speaker.
The study, led by Suh Seok Choi, professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, and conducted by PhD students Jiyong Park, Junhyuk Shin, Inpyo Hong, Sanghyun Han, and Dr. Sengmin Nam, was published in the online journal npj Flexible Electronics. Development and display production for gadgets is striving to create flexible, foldable, twistable, and stretchable screens. However, most concepts are still based on the use of mechanical structures, such as hinges, hinges, sliders, and automated fasteners.
They allow you to change the shape of displays, however, they retain thick bezels, add extra weight, and limit design solutions. These disadvantages are particularly sensitive for smartphones and other compact electronic devices. Such devices often require the addition of separate modules for speakers, which makes such gadgets even more complex.
Modern existing flexible displays allow the screen to bend to enhance the viewing experience and reduce image distortion. However, most of the designs presented at MWC 2024 still achieve this by relying on mechanical U-bends that limit flexibility and require additional components for audio transformation and playback.
To overcome these limitations, the South Korean researchers used a technology based on an ultra-thin piezoelectric polymer actuator integrated into a flexible OLED panel. This made it possible to give this flexible screen a variety of complex shapes, including not only concave curves, but also convex, S-shaped, inverted S-shaped, and wave-like configurations.
The developers emphasize that the transformation of the screen is achieved exclusively through electrical signals, without the use of mechanical elements such as hinges. At the same time, the display remains ultra-thin, soft, and weighs almost nothing. The piezoelectric actuator is also capable of generating vibration in response to high-frequency electrical signals, allowing the OLED panel to work as a speaker without the need to integrate traditional speakers.
«It is the first technology to combine arbitrary shape change and built-in audio output in a single ultra-thin OLED panel with no external components. We have retained everything OLED displays are known for — thinness, flexibility and lightness — and extended their functionality in a completely new direction of complex and dynamic shape change with additional sound», — said Professor Suh Seok Choi.
Researchers have successfully tested their technology on a real OLED panel smartphone, which demonstrated the ability to arbitrarily change shape and generate clear, high-quality sound. It is noted that the innovative technology stands out significantly among other commercial displays on the market. For example, the CES 2025 award-winning LG 5K 2K flexible monitor still relies on motorized drives, while Samsung’s AI-enhanced OLED displays demonstrated at MWC 2024, while impressive, do not integrate audio into the display surface itself, and a conventional bulky speaker is wrapped in a flexible OLED display, also using structural support.
This innovation lays the groundwork for a new generation of shape-adaptive and audio-responsive smart displays in many industries. Potential applications range from the transformation of mobile displays, immersive automotive dashboards and audiovisual wearables to soft robots with interactive expressive surfaces.
The results of the study are published in the journal Nature
Source: TechXplore
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