Full Color, Flexible, Day/Nighttime Displays for Mobile Battle Command Environments

The goal of this U.S. Army CERDEC SBIR Program is to design, develop, and demonstrate a full color, flexible, hands free Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) display to increase the operational capability of Commanders to have both daytime and covert nighttime functionality. Universal Display Corporation (UDC) is developing advanced organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology based on their proprietary high-efficiency phosphorescent OLED (PHOLED™), transparent OLED (TOLED™) and flexible OLED (FOLED®) technologies all of which are key enabling technologies to this program. The development of novel infrared-emitting PHOLED pixels integrated with UDC’s visible color PHOLED technologies and a poly-Si TFT backplane on flexible metal foil is the best solution to meet the Army’s flexible display requirements. These technologies will enable a high information content display that will not give away a Commander’s position or location during night time situations and therefore will avoid signature detection. PHOLEDs are highly emissive with a wide viewing angle, are compatible with flexible substrates, and provide an all solid state monolithic, low power consumption emissive display technology. Our proposed approach of integrating visible and infrared-emitting OLEDs on a flexible metal foil substrate will also provide a rugged package to ensure survivability in an uncontrolled battlefield environment.