Follow LG Display’s journey of OLED innovation,where future technology became today’s reality.
Displays have continuously evolved from early CRTs to PDPs, LCDs, and ultimately to OLED—the ultimate display technology—driven by the pursuit of bigger and brighter performance. LG Display didn’t stop there; it pushed beyond the limits of flat displays to develop OLEDs with freeform factors. This is how Flexible OLED was born.
LG Display’s Flexible OLED broke free from the constraints of traditional glass substrates by using plastic substrates that are both impact-resistant and freely bendable, opening up new possibilities for curved displays.
The Challenge – From Flat to Flexible
Creating a “bendable screen” was far more than just shaping a panel. The challenge was to preserve OLED’s self-emissive advantages while preventing picture degradation on curved surfaces, all while ensuring flexibility, durability, and ultra-thin form factors. LG Display successfully developed flexible OLED technology by minimizing panel thickness to achieve the maximum curvature radius, developing films with outstanding flexibility and durability that can be rolled without breaking, and advancing optimal fabrication processes.
Flexible OLEDs share the same structure as conventional OLEDs, but they use polyimide—a type of plastic—as the substrate material instead of glass. Polyimide is a polymer known for its excellent resilience and impact resistance. It is processed from a liquid state into a thin-film form. In other words, by replacing the rigid glass substrate with a flexible plastic one, Flexible OLEDs become thinner, lighter, and capable of bending freely.
Globally Recognized Innovation in Flexible OLED Technology
In 2013, LG Display’s Flexible OLED technology quickly evolved beyond smartphones toward larger and more versatile formats. In 2014, the company developed the world’s first 18-inch Flexible OLED, achieving HD resolution with a 30R curvature radius.
Global recognition soon followed. At SID 2014, the world’s largest display exhibition, A smartphone equipped with LG Display’s flexible OLED won ‘the Display Application of the Year Gold Award’, and the 55-inch full HD curved OLED TV panel, which has a curvature radius of 5,000R to minimize picture quality degradation due to viewing angle, won ‘the Display of the Year Silver Award’.
The company’s 18-inch Flexible OLED was also honored as Best of What’s New 2014 by the science magazine ‘Popular Science’, cementing LG Display’s position as a pioneer of future display technologies.
Flexible OLED has since evolved beyond curved designs to transform display form factors altogether. The technology has expanded into bendable, foldable, and rollable formats, it is unlocking new applications for automotive, wearable, and tablet displays.
At the heart of these innovations, LG Display continues to lead the charge, shaping the next era of display technology.
