LG has reached a new milestone in stretchable display technology with a prototype that stretches up to 1.5 times its size, surpassing the flexibility of its previous version.
Two years ago, LG Display showed a prototype of what was deemed the world’s first stretchable display – a 12-inch MicroLED display that could folded, twisted, and stretched by up to 20 percent. Now, the LG electronics sister company managed to develop an even stretchier version: the new prototype can elongate by up to 50 percent to achieve an 18-inch panel size, making it more suitable to actually sew it into clothing or apply directly onto skin.
Aside from wearables, the clothing industry has always been considered the main target market for stretchable displays. The first model was already picked up by Korean fashion designers Youn-Hee Park and Chung-Chung Lee for Seoul Fashion Week 2024. But besides giving designers a new fabric to experiment with, the stretchable MicroLED is also intended to be integrated into utility clothing, like firefighter uniforms, to display warning signals or real-time information.
The rubber band-like flexibility is achieved through a highly elastic film substrate made from a special silicon, the same material used in contact lenses. The display uses a MicroLED light source with a pixel size of 40 micrometers. Instead of a traditional cable system, it has an S-shaped spring wire system designed to endure up to 10,000 bends. The prototype achieves a resolution of 100 ppi (pixels per inch) and full red, green, and blue (RGB) color.
R&D backed by the government
The stretchable LG screen is the result of a large-scale national research and development project that LG has been leading on behalf of the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) since 2020. The aim of the project is to drive South Korea’s next-generation display industry forward. To this end, the company is working with 20 organizations from industry and research.
However, it doesn’t come as a surprise that LG’s main competitor Samsung is also onto the technology: This August, they showcased the first result of their own R&D efforts: a similar MicroLED-based product that can stretch by 20 percent and achieves a resolution of 120 ppi.
