Korea's KAIST institute researchers developed a new stress-relief substrate that is suitable for the creation of stretchable OLEDs that can maintain their performance under high-strain deformation.

The researchers say that the new stress-relief substrates have a unique structure and is made from a patterned "upper substrate" with bridges on top of pillars that decentralize the stress on the device.

Samsung Display is set to demonstrate a 9.1-inch stretchable AMOLED prototype during SID 2017. This display can stretch up to 12 mm when pressed, and still maintain its high resolution (which SDC did not specify).

This is an exciting development - but we're all waiting for Samsung to first commercialize its foldable OLEDs, and only then can we expect to see commercial rollable and stretchable displays.

Researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) developed a stretchable circuit that includes an OLED display, produced entirely using an ink-jet printer.

The researchers used special developed inks to produce both the circuits and the organic elements - and they say that the ink was also used to produce the substrate, but that seems rather unlikely.

IHS says that flexible displays are an "increasingly important segment of overall display market revenues", and by 2024 flexible displays (mostly OLEDs) will grab 15% of the total flat panel display market.

Flexible display production will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44% from 2014 - to reach $23 billion in 2024. The growth may actually accelerate when display makers start to produce rollable, foldable and stretchable panels and devices.

Flexible OLED displays are quickly becoming a reality, and it is expected that starting from 2015 we're going to start seeing foldable and eventually even stretchable OLEDs used in commercial devices. But for really flexible devices, all components must be flexible too.

While flexible batteries are already being developed, another possibility is to use a flexible supercapacitor. Researchers from MIT developed an extremely stretchable supercapacitor based on crumpled graphene paper.

The Holst Center is developing OLEDs on foil, with an aim to integrate them on textiles. In the following video you can see some demonstrations of OLED and LED integrated into textiles and OLEDs on a stretchable matrix, too:

I really liked that fabric with the Holst Centre with the hidden LEDs... Nice!

The Holst Centre released a few nice videos, and I think they're worth a watch. First up is the one about their flexible OLED display research. Last year Holst and imec announced a new program to develop high resolution flexible OLED displays, with a focus on a mechanically flexible encapsulation film and TFT backplane, printed high-efficiency OLED and new materials and processes. The video below shows their first display (which was already unveiled last month):

In this new video you can see that the display is monochrome (red) and contains several defects.

In Q2 2011 Samsung submitted a patent application that describes devices with flexible displays. This patent is now public, and it shows several concepts: A "pen" type device that has a stretchable screen, a bracelet type device and a book like device that can open up.

According to the patent, all sorts of displays may be used to power such a display: including e-paper, LCd and of course OLEDs. Flexible OLEDs are coming in 2012 from Samsung, but don't expect such bendable displays yet. The 2012 crop will be plastic-based displays that will be shatterproof, light and thin - but not bendable...

Researchers from UCLA demonstrated an intrinsically stretchable transparent PLED device. The device was fabricated using a simple process that uses single-walled carbon nanotube polymer composite electrodes. The interpenetrating networks of nanotubes and the polymer matrix in the surface layer of the composites lead to low sheet resistance, high transparency, high compliance and low surface roughness.

The new P-OLED prototype can be linearly stretched up to 45% (see photo below) and the composite electrodes can be reversibly stretched by up to 50% with little change in sheet resistance. They say that this is the first stretchable OLED. Back in 2009, researchers from Tokyo demonstrated a stretchable "rubber like" OLED panel which made from many small individual panels (it's not clear whether each small panel was stretchable by itself).

Researchers from UCLA developed a new transparent electrode based on silver nanowires (AgNW) that is a replacement for ITO. The new electrode is made from low-cost and non-toxic materials and is easy to fabricate. It also offers high transparency, low sheet resistance and low surface roughness.

The new electrode is produced on a cross-linked, transparent polyacylate substrate, which is cheaper than glass and can be stiff and rigid or flexible and stretchable. The researchers say that the new electrode could be used to create a shape-memory polymer substrate that can be deformed to various stable shapes - and the deformation is reversible, causes minimal damage to the devices so it can be repeated many times.