The Birth of Flexible OLED

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.

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.

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’.