Fully Flexible Information Electronics with a Flexible Display

The Army’s investment in flexible displays has resulted in several promising technologies which can be incorporated into novel applications that are far more practical for military use than those with conventional rigid glass-based liquid crystal display (LCD) technologies. An application such as a Fully-Flexible Information Assistant (FFIA) using these new flexible displays is essential for providing battlefield information from an all-source, network-centric environment to the individual soldier in a practical, ultra-rugged manner never quite possible before. The proposed FFIA design will require a novel flexible electronics solution consisting of a flexible circuit assembly with functionality that includes: human interfacing, wireless & wireless communication, Global Positioning System (GPS), power management, and a processor-memory combination with computational strength to execute current and future Army applications. To meet the aggregate mechanical flexibility of the total system, flexible and/or rigid-flexible printed circuit boards (PCBs) would be selected and fabricated to maximize reliability of the system. Following this SBIR, two distinct “first flexible applications” become apparent: (a.) A fully integrated FFIA in single package and (b.) a FFIA where the flexible display module is separate from the flexible processing electronics.