LG Shows Concept Of Sliding Door With 55″ OLED Display Embedded In Glass

August 17, 2020 by Dave Haynes

LG’s commercial display wing is circulating via Linkedin a proof of concept of a sliding access door for retail and publicly accessible buildings that has a transparent OLED embedded between sheets of window glass.

The OLED is a 55-inch display, and the idea would be that visitors can’t help but see a visual – whether that’s a sales promotion or messaging like a “please wear a mask!” reminder.

An OLED is super-thin and self-emissive, so it does not need a backlight (like LCD displays) to illuminate the pixels. LG says multiple OLDs could be tiled for a larger access door.

This would NOT be cheap, because transparent OLEDs are not cheap, and custom fabrication like this also costs a couple of bucks. It would be much more suitable to a mall interior or other inside application, for technical reasons like brightness limits.

But conceptually, it’s interesting, and we will doubtless see more and more high-rez digital either on or in glass in the next few years – be that via film, embedded OLED, microLED or reflective film.

I have seen variations on this, with projection on a film on the sliding glass access door. But that introduces all kinds of complications, including a bright light possibly hitting people as they walk in.