Samsung’s flexible OLED technology is vulnerable to both moisture and oxygen degradation. Encapsulation technology is required to prevent these OLED displays from degrading over time. This technology gives them a protective coating which shields them from the harsh elements of life.
However, Samsung originally chose Vitex System’s encapsulation technology at the end of 2011 but since then it has struggled with it. The reason is that Samsung can’t get their OLED displays encapsulated fast enough for mass production. Consequently, Samsung now has to investigate other routes for encapsulating its LED displays and this means a delay.
“As we have accumulated expertise in this field, progress is being made in substrates as well as encapsulation technology. We have developed a new technology that can shorten the encapsulation process to less than two minutes by using the Vitex System-developed encapsulation technology,” according to Samsung Display.
Samsung may try and speed up the existing process if possible, or move to a new system of encapsulation. For consumers though, the technicalities are irrelevant. The important, and irritating, thing to note is that these flexible displays are delayed for the foreseeable future. Samsung gave no time frame on the potential delay so guessing when these flexible displays will be ready is total guess work. By the sounds of it though, most of the ground work is done in terms of the core design, it is just the last process – encapsulation – that has suffered a technical hitch.
Are you disappointed about the potential delay? When do you think we will see flexible displays come to market?
I’m probably being really dumb but I’m struggling to imagine a scenario where I would want a flexible screen? What kind of technology would this be good for, not saying its bad, I’m just merely curious 🙂