Just Two Words: Plastic Chips

摘要

It's called the seduction room. Eastman Kodak Co. uses it to woo visitors with the vivid colors that light up new-breed video screens. They're made from organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. And in the room's side-by-side comparisons with ordinary liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), the difference is impressive: Colors are more vibrant, resolution is crisper, and the OLED screens can be viewed from farther off to the sides without visual loss. Kodak fell for OLEDs long ago. In 1979, researcher Ching Tang was looking for an inexpensive plastic solar cell to convert light into electricity. Ironically, says Willy C. Shih, president of Kodak's Display & Components Group, Tang stumbled on a polymer recipe that "did just the opposite." His plastic converted electricity into light―with unprecedented efficiency for an organic compound. Kodak has been smitten ever since.