LG Display announced that it will demonstrate several new OLED technologies at CES 2020 in Las Vegas next week (January 7-10).

First up, LG Display will show new applications for the aerospace market - including 55" transparent and flexible OLEDs used in airplane cabins. LG will also demonstrate a 65" bendable OLED TV, suitable for first-class cabins, that enable users to adjust the curvature of the TV to create a more immersive experience when required. It seems as if interest in OLEDs is increasing in the aerospace industry.

Boeing's ecoDemonstrator is an innovation program that takes promising technologies and tests them in a real aircraft. The company chooses a different airplane each year to test the new technologies.

In 2019 Boeing chose a 777 aircraft, and installed several new technologies with an aim to test enhanced safety, reduced fuel consumption and noise - and also to make for a better passenger experience. In 2019 Boeing installed OLED displays as main displays and also in the ceiling. Boeing may adopt such OLEDs in future aircrafts.

Lufthansa Technik announced a joint venture with LG Electronics to develop, produce and market OLED displays for commercial aircraft cabins. The venture will be based in Hamburg, Germany and will commence operations in the first half of 2019.

Lufthansa says that LG's lightweight and flexible OLED display technologies could be used to create new markets for on-board aircraft applications such as welcome screens in entrance areas, and interior linings. The image above shows a proposed application, promoting upgrade options during the boarding phase.

The UK innovation agency (Innovate UK) has launched a new 30-month project called UltraWELD, which aims to improve airtight bonding in OLED lighting for aerospace and defense applications. The project partners will develop photonic-based processes for highly dissimilar material joining.

Current dissimilar materials joining is mainly done using adhesive bonding - a highly flexible and low cost process, but one that cannot provide truly hermetic bonds, which reduces the performance of the panels and can lead to optical damage.

US-based Aura is a new semi-private boutique airline. Aura announced its new aircraft design, and two different classes - first and wave. The wave class includes OLED displays in the windows (Aura says these will be transparent OLEDs).

The wave class will also include a large tiled OLED display on the ceiling (as you can see in the image above), which will simulate the sky. These look like LG's commercial OLED TV installation.

Emirates Airlines unveiled the first class suite on board of its newest Boeing 777-300ER aircraft - with virtual windows. These displays are connected directly to cameras outside the aircraft but can also show other images. This has several advantages - images can be tailored to help combat jet lag, the plane can be lighter, stronger, faster and more efficient. It is not entirely clear, but it is reported that the Emirates is using OLED displays.

The idea of using virtual OLED displays instead of aircraft windows has been discussed several times before. The aerospace industry has been slow to adopt OLEDs - the first application was Bombardier's nice Touch cabin management system on Lufthansa Technik's Global 7000 business aircraft, which uses a dial with a small OLED (probably PMOLED) display. The system was announced in May 2018.

UK's R&D institute, the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), published a nice video showing how OLED technologies can make aircraft safer, more efficient and more entertaining. We're still a long way before this kind of solutions are available...

In February 2014, Spike Aerospace announced that instead of conventional windows, it will use curved, super-thin digital displays in their upcoming supersonic business jet, the S-512. The S-512 will be available in 2018, and will reportedly cost $80 million. Spike did not mention OLEDs specifically, but it makes sense that OLEDs will be employed for this advanced aircraft.

Spike Aerospace is developing a supersonic business jet. The company announced that instead of conventional windows, it will use curved, super-thin digital displays. The S-512 will reportedly cost $80 million when it becomes available in 2018.

The jet will use micro-cameras to create panoramic views on the curved displays in real time. This has several advantages - you can display whatever you want on these displays, it eliminates glares, it reduces the aircraft's weight, part count and drag and will also simplify the aircraft construction and integrity.

In May 2013, the US DOE granted a $225,000 project to Universal Display and IDD Aerospace to develop a low-energy shelf phosphorescent OLED light targeted at aircraft interiors. A few days ago, the two companies exhibited a prototype panel at the DOE's SSL R&D Workshop.

The OLED prototype shown at the workshop is a shelf utility panel that is very slim and energy efficient. The two companies believe that the data generated by developing this shelf utility light may be applied to larger-scale OLED lighting aircraft projects, including cabin applications for interior furniture, galley, interior structure enhancements, as well as other potential adoptions in cabin accent, task, ceiling and sidewall lighting, and sign backlighting.

Fraunhofer's COMEDD and POG Präzisionsoptik Gera have co-developed OLED structures coated in the range of micrometers at opaque or transparent glass substrates. This technology can be used in complex optical and opto-electronical systems in a range of applications (medical, laser, aerospace, telescopes, microscopes and even sports optics). Basically these are transparent optical devices with self-emitting figures, points or lines;

The best technology used today to achieve the same effect uses prisms. The advantage the new design is that the active luminous area is integrated directly into the glass substrate which results in a better field of view, and the whole system is much more simple - and hopefully will result in cheaper designs.