Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) are the future for viewing screens, according to British company Cambridge Display Technology. Cambridge Display Technology recently announced that it will become the world leader in the production of glowing plastics as a result of its acquisition of the Opsys technology of rival Oxford University, which will be combined with their light-emitting polymers (LEPs) to enhance OLED technology. Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) also claims that they will have mastered the technology to produce roll-up computer and television screens by 2005. CDT and Oxford currently sell their 'know-how' to major electronics manufacturers, including Philips, DuPont, Siemens-owned Osram, and Seiko Epson, some of whom have just opened factories for production of the first generation of monochrome OLED displays used in cell phones and razors. OLED technology is made from polymers that emit light and do not require the backlighting of current flat screen liquid crystal displays (LCDs). This makes them energy efficient and so thin that they can literally be folded. Opsys technology, developed at Oxford and St. Andrews Universities in 1997, uses dendrimers, polymers that are brighter and more energy efficient than CDT's light-emitting polymers (LEPs).

The U.S. producer and a pioneer of OLEDs is Eastman Kodak. The market for OLEDs is predicted to grow from $85 million this year to $3 billion by 2007, according to U.S. market research group, DisplaySearch. CDT Chief Executive David Fyfe expects that by 2005 the technology will have matured sufficiently and the price will be competitive enough that it will challenge and eventually replace LCD full-color flat screens, even though these just recently started displacing 70-year old cathode ray tube technology (CRT). According to Fyfe, "The attraction is that (OLEDs) are much more energy efficient. It doesn't generate as much heat and the light goes only in one direction."
From Tom's Hardware Guide, 2002-10-30