Hey, you want some OLED on that?

Looks like the television is about to shrink-again. A pair of Japanese companies are working on the spreadable screen. How'd you like to paint your TV on the wall?

That's exactly the idea that two scientists at Sumitomo Chemical and Mitsubishi Chemical are working on. They're working with chemicals that contain OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) compounds, which are the technology behind new research into ultra-flat screens. OLED screens can be so thin because they don't require a backlight like an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen does. In fact, Tokitaro Hoshijima of Mitsubishi speaks of creating spreadable OLED displays only 100nm thick. Furthermore, he adds that the technology that allows these organic compounds to work together as a display also makes it possible for them to convert solar energy into electricity. Sumitomo's taking it one step further by working on a sprayable version of the same idea.

Wait, this sounds better all the time. A potentially invisible big screen on a wall that will charge itself? Hoshijima says: "What I want to create is a world that does not need power sockets."

This seems like the biggest boon for OLED technology in general, the idea that the technology is not only incredibly small and thin but potentially able to power itself. Not requiring any backlighting means that OLEDs consume very little power at all, which also means that your 77-inch, painted-on, 100nm thick, self-powered TV will potentially use less power than a hair dryer. (Don't quote me on that figure, though.) Hoshijima mentions that similar compounds applied to objects like, say, your cell phone could provide it with enough charge to run when exposed to sunlight. These two giants and other companies as well are developing solar panel paint that when painted onto a steel building will convert about 5% of the absorbed sunlight to electricity. That sounds like a pretty small number, but considering the square footage exposed to sunlight on the average warehouse, it'd do just fine.

There's only one downside to OLEDs...it's the O. Since these are Organic compounds, they do degrade at a quicker rate than, say, steel.

So you might have to paint a new television every few years. I think I can handle that.