Sony develops roll-up screen

Japanese electronics giant Sony said yesterday it had developed "the world's first" prototype flexible colour video screen that is small enough to be rolled around a pencil.

The screen consists of an ultra-thin flexible material covered in organic semiconductors, potentially pointing to a future of flexible mobile devices, television, electronic newspapers and magazines.

"Even after 1,000 cycles of repeatedly rolling-up and stretching the display, there was no clear degradation in the display's ability to reproduce moving images," Sony said of its flexible Organic Light Emitting Display (OLED).

Sony is not the only Japanese firm developing long-lasting flexible displays, with public broadcaster NHK having also worked on similar techniques in recent years.

Japan's Department of New Energy and Industrial Technologies is also leading a research programme in a bid to create a manufacturing chain for the displays similar to the way newspapers are printed.

The prototype screen will be presented today at a conference on the sidelines of the Society for Information Display exhibition in Seattle, US.