Toshiba LCD Panel Zooms In-and-Out By Bending It (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- Toshiba has come up with a method of zooming in-and-out of images by just bending the display. All you need to do is bend the thin flexible panel and the image will zoom in or out accordingly.

Toshiba Corp demonstrated this at the SID 2010 which is the largest international conference on display technologies.

At the conference, Toshiba demonstrated zooming in-and-out of an aerial photograph of Google Earth displayed on the screen by bending the LCD panel. This little demonstration was drawing the attention of many engineers who attended the conference.

The LCD panel has sensors located at the end of the backlight unit. By bending the sensor the resistance value changes thereby causing the zooming in-and-out effect. In order to achieve this with the LCD panel, Toshiba manufactured a thin backlight unit that can be bent to a curvature radius of 50mm, boasting an edge-lighting LED backlight unit whose light guide plate is as thin as 0.4mm.

The LCD panel screen size measures 8.4 inches and has a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels (SVGA). The thickness of the glass substrate used for the LCD panel is 0.1mm.

How useful this bendable LCD panel will be in applications has yet to be seen. Bendable LCD panels have been around for a while but this is the first bendable LCD panel I have come across that zooms in-and-out of images by bending the display.

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