Merck, a global market and technology leader for liquid crystals and organic electronic materials, said Monday it has succeeded in developing next-generation plastic LCD technology along with its U.K.-based strategic partner FlexEnable.

Merck said that the new technology will make bendable, lightweight, thinner and the most unbreakable LCDs possible that can be used in diverse areas such as e-readers, dynamic public signage and advertising.

For the trial products of the technology, FlexEnable provided its organic transistor technology, while liquid crystal and organic semiconductor materials were supplied by Merck.

Plastic LCDs, using organic transistors on a plastic sheet, help make products 10 times thinner, more than 10 times lighter and cheaper than conventional glass-based displays, Merck said.

Especially the new technology offers low-cost solutions for mass production of LCDs, the dominant display technology now in the market, the company said.

“The new technology shows that plastic-based bendable or even flexible displays are not a dream, but a true possibility and encourages us to develop new liquid crystal modes,” said Inese Lowenstein, Merck’s chief of display materials business unit.

“We can also imagine how the size of liquid crystal displays can grow even further, by making them lightweight, transportable and unbreakable.”

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)