Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: with How Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I
Speaker 1: love all things tech. And now I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: to you a little bit about classic episode, an episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff that we published way back on March
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve called tech Stuff Stairs at O LEDs,
Speaker 1: O L E d S. Chris Palette and I sat
Speaker 1: down to talk about what are O LEDs, how do
Speaker 1: they work, and why are they important? And I think
Speaker 1: it's funny to listen to this older episode because when
Speaker 1: we were recording it back in two thousand twelve, oh
Speaker 1: LED screens were still very much in that R and
Speaker 1: D kind of prototype stage. You didn't really see them
Speaker 1: in very many consumer products. And these days where you're
Speaker 1: seeing them and all sorts of stuff from smartphone too, tablets,
Speaker 1: to laptop computers to television sets. So it's neat to
Speaker 1: see how things have changed. Enjoy this classic episode. I
Speaker 1: think by when I first started at How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: oh lads, we're still very very much in the prototype stage,
Speaker 1: and you didn't really see anything on the market at
Speaker 1: that time, the consumer market anyway, they had an O
Speaker 1: LEDs type screen and now they're much later in the
Speaker 1: prototype stage. But we're kidding the lads. Actually, now we're
Speaker 1: getting to the point where we're finally seeing them scaled
Speaker 1: up to large screen TVs. But for a long time,
Speaker 1: the biggest screen you're gonna get with something like eleven Yeah. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: the genesis of my joke being that people who are
Speaker 1: really interested in OLED technology have been waiting for them
Speaker 1: to come out for a very long time, and it
Speaker 1: seems like they're they've been in development of some kind
Speaker 1: for a for a long long time. They've been actually
Speaker 1: pretty common in smaller screens like smartphones, rins for example. Um,
Speaker 1: they're they're really great for that. They use less energy
Speaker 1: than a lot of the other technologies and they're excellent
Speaker 1: for that. But that's you know, getting them scaled up
Speaker 1: has taken a long time, and the people who have
Speaker 1: been waiting, I'm gonna buy an old TV like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I wouldn't hold my breath. Well, but finally
Speaker 1: they're starting to hit now. But and and also the
Speaker 1: other thing people have been waiting for, and it's one
Speaker 1: of the types we'll talk about in a little a
Speaker 1: little further in in the podcast is the flexible oh lady,
Speaker 1: that idea of having a display that is actually malleable,
Speaker 1: that you can bend it around things. And you know,
Speaker 1: you might use that to have a foldable display. That's
Speaker 1: what a lot of people talk about. But there are
Speaker 1: other things you could use it for, Like you could
Speaker 1: use it in displays. Stay in a store where you've
Speaker 1: got round columns and you could have a display wrapping
Speaker 1: around this round column. Uh yeah, things like that. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's uh, and that's the thing about it. I think, Um,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it's taken a while to get
Speaker 1: law er oh lad screens, the technology will be worth
Speaker 1: the way. But I think it's uh. I think it
Speaker 1: is a good idea to go ahead and talk about
Speaker 1: the similarities. And there I think three major similarities between
Speaker 1: the technologies red, green, and blue light. Well, the purpose
Speaker 1: of all all the technologies we're talking about here, you know,
Speaker 1: plasma l C D and uh you know the oh
Speaker 1: lads or l E D screens and organic l E
Speaker 1: D screens. Um, you know, it's it's to display information
Speaker 1: and it shows us light. Um. The trick is really
Speaker 1: how they go about doing that. And we've talked about
Speaker 1: some of the other technologies in the past, like for example,
Speaker 1: plasma uses uh gases ionized gas, and basically you they
Speaker 1: show the different colors by running a charge through the
Speaker 1: gas and then look like l c D uses liquid crystals,
Speaker 1: and these liquid crystals actually form a barrier between light
Speaker 1: and the clear part of the screen, and then the
Speaker 1: l c D these through various running an electric current
Speaker 1: through change shape and that allows light to pass through
Speaker 1: and there's some color filters in there and that's where
Speaker 1: we get the displays through that. So that's a liquid
Speaker 1: crystal display. L E d s are light emitting diodes
Speaker 1: and we've had those around for for quite some time
Speaker 1: and they're pretty efficient. They're more efficient than a lot
Speaker 1: of other forms of lighting. But an O l e D,
Speaker 1: as Chris had mentioned, is an organic light emitting diode.
Speaker 1: And you might think, well, what how that huh, And
Speaker 1: it really comes down to uh kind of a an
Speaker 1: organic sandwich. Yes, And the thing is, uh, they're not
Speaker 1: terribly different from from the typical l E d s,
Speaker 1: but it's it really comes down to the materials used
Speaker 1: to make that sandwich. So they're they're they're very thin, alright,
Speaker 1: So an O L D it's it's solid state, all right,
Speaker 1: And it is usually between one to five hundred natomie
Speaker 1: eaters thick, which is pretty thin. That's according to UH
Speaker 1: to most estimates. And this does change from one source
Speaker 1: to another, but it's about two hundred times thinner than
Speaker 1: a human hair in diameter. Now, human hair is actually
Speaker 1: come into a variety of diameters. It's like one person's
Speaker 1: hair might be thinner than another's. Some people have clear
Speaker 1: hair like me, My hair is invisible to the human eye.
Speaker 1: But yeah, at any rate, the two hundred it's an average,
Speaker 1: So it's two hundred times smaller than the diameter of
Speaker 1: human hair. And uh, it's they're different layers within this sandwich, right,
Speaker 1: and that's what is creating the light that you see.
Speaker 1: And there's the basics the the bread on this sandwich,
Speaker 1: if you will, is our pair of electrodes. Right, you've
Speaker 1: got your cathode and you've got your technically, you also
Speaker 1: have the substrate. This substrate is the foundation that the
Speaker 1: O LED sits upon. So substrate is also part of this.
Speaker 1: But I'm looking mostly at the components that actually make
Speaker 1: the lad work. Right, So, yeah, you've got the cathode
Speaker 1: and the anode, and you've got the jobs of the
Speaker 1: cathode and the anode are to create a circuit for
Speaker 1: electricity to flow through, right, right, The electrons flow from
Speaker 1: one to the other. Yea, from the cathode to the anode.
Speaker 1: And in a way you have to kind of think
Speaker 1: of this in uh interesting terms, like, so, cathode is
Speaker 1: injecting negative particles into this o led sandwich. Are you positive? Yes,
Speaker 1: I am positive that they are negative electrons, is what
Speaker 1: cathodes are putting into their The anode is creating, well
Speaker 1: what we call them electron holes. They're positive. It's they
Speaker 1: turn an element to a positively charged element. They actually
Speaker 1: pull electrons out of it, and so now it's positively charged.
Speaker 1: So that means that the electrons coming from the cathode
Speaker 1: are attracted towards the anno side. Hey, you're pretty cute.
Speaker 1: And so it has to pass through the other layers
Speaker 1: of the sandwich. And there are two or three other layers,
Speaker 1: depending on the type of oh ledge you're looking at,
Speaker 1: but really the two layer is the most common, So
Speaker 1: I'll just stick with that. So you've got your emissive layer,
Speaker 1: this is the layer that actually emits light, and you
Speaker 1: have your conductive layer, which is the layer that attracts
Speaker 1: the electrons through the other materials. So if we're looking
Speaker 1: at top to bottom and the bottom is the substrate,
Speaker 1: then the top layer is your cathode. Next down you
Speaker 1: have your emissive layer, that's where the light comes through.
Speaker 1: Then you have your conductive layer that's what's pulling the
Speaker 1: electrons down. Then you have the annode layer. That's what's
Speaker 1: really pulling the electrons down. It's what's allowing the conductive
Speaker 1: layer to pull these electrons through. And then you have
Speaker 1: the substrate. So, uh, why are we getting light? Boy?
Speaker 1: This this gets into some interesting physics here. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you've got the electrons coming through from one side, you've
Speaker 1: got the electron holes coming through from the other side.
Speaker 1: So in a way, you can think of negative charge
Speaker 1: and positive charge. I know that sounds weird, but just
Speaker 1: go with me here. And when those two meet, the
Speaker 1: molecule that they meet at becomes uh, actually drops an
Speaker 1: electron into that positive hole, and as a result, there
Speaker 1: is a difference in energy. It releases some energy as
Speaker 1: a result of that that reaction, and that energy is
Speaker 1: released in the form of a photon. And we've talked
Speaker 1: about this before about how if you excite an atom,
Speaker 1: you know, by telling you it's going to dine world
Speaker 1: or something, and the electrons moved to a higher energy state.
Speaker 1: When those electrons move back down, once that energy has
Speaker 1: has been removed from the system, once the electrons move
Speaker 1: back down, they have to release that extra energy, and
Speaker 1: they often will do this in the form of photons,
Speaker 1: which we perceive as light. That's exactly what's going on here. Actually,
Speaker 1: I saw a great video on this uh M my
Speaker 1: t S site where a professor was explaining how oh
Speaker 1: LED's work by shocking the heck out of a pickle.
Speaker 1: He had a had a cathode and an anode um
Speaker 1: attached to a pickle and was running a very high
Speaker 1: electric current through it, which was making the pickle glow.
Speaker 1: And it was this is what was happening. You had
Speaker 1: the positive charge in the negative charge meeting and the
Speaker 1: molecules where it met at that's where it was releasing
Speaker 1: this electron and uh and and releasing a photon or
Speaker 1: or it was the electron states were moving down and
Speaker 1: the photons were being released, and that's why we were
Speaker 1: getting light. Um pretty cool. Actually, I kind of wanted
Speaker 1: to build one, except for the fact that I'm sure
Speaker 1: I would probably electric you myself. For a second there,
Speaker 1: I thought you were girk in my chain. Ha ha. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so when we're talking about electricity, we're not talking about
Speaker 1: a lot. It said, these are pretty efficient, so we're
Speaker 1: talking in a realm of just a few volts that
Speaker 1: are needed in order to excite these molecules so that
Speaker 1: they emit light. That's one of the major benefits of
Speaker 1: old screens is that they don't require as much electricity
Speaker 1: as some others. You know. Of course, plasma TVs are
Speaker 1: are notorious for using a lot of electricity. Well, you
Speaker 1: have to keep pouring in electricity to keep that gas ionized.
Speaker 1: So yeah, plasma display is not They've gotten a lot
Speaker 1: better last few years, but is it is, by its
Speaker 1: very nature, is not the most environmentally friendly way of
Speaker 1: creating television. Not that TV is terribly environmentally friendly no
Speaker 1: matter how you do it, but but it's it's less
Speaker 1: So yeah, plasma has a reputation for being for being
Speaker 1: less energy friendly. So yeah, there there there have been
Speaker 1: some better ones, but still uh and those two different
Speaker 1: layers of molecules are are are organic, but they're organic
Speaker 1: plastic thick. It's pretty cool organic plastic like poly aniline
Speaker 1: and polyfluorine. Okay, all right, you know Pollyanna, you know
Speaker 1: when you when you say we're organic plastic, that sort
Speaker 1: of sounds like it's oxymoronic, like you know organ chuah
Speaker 1: wa um. Well that that's actually UM. We should talk
Speaker 1: about to the different types of OH leads because there
Speaker 1: are r G B OH lead screens and then there's
Speaker 1: the white lead screen UM, which sort of uses a
Speaker 1: color sandwich to UM, and by by activating red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue, you get white UM. And uh. You know
Speaker 1: those the red, green and blue are are pressed together
Speaker 1: in the same pixel. So by doing that you can
Speaker 1: you can have the have basically a pure white UM
Speaker 1: and it's it. It works a little slightly differently than
Speaker 1: than the others simply because of at UM. There are
Speaker 1: people say that it has a longer life than the
Speaker 1: traditional O lead screens UM, but that is supposed to
Speaker 1: be one of the advantages of it UM. And it's
Speaker 1: also possible to uh to scale the white OH lead
Speaker 1: screens up a little easier from what I understand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also been talked about as a potential replacement for
Speaker 1: things like fluorescent lights, where not just for displays, but
Speaker 1: for actual lighting, because that's it's even more efficient than
Speaker 1: fluorescent lighting is. And uh, you know you don't have
Speaker 1: that mercury that you gotta worry about in fluorescent lights. Yeah. Guys,
Speaker 1: if you have those little fluorescent bulbs, which are you know,
Speaker 1: more energy efficient incandescent bulbs will good on you, but
Speaker 1: be very careful with them, yes, because those suckers do
Speaker 1: contain some very toxic chemicals in them that can be
Speaker 1: very dangerous. Yes, you do not want to bust them, right,
Speaker 1: So the O lead lights might be a nice alternative
Speaker 1: to that, you know, if if it's efficient enough so
Speaker 1: that they make economic sense to the consumer, because you know,
Speaker 1: you gotta worry about that, uh, and also the fact
Speaker 1: that they don't have these toxic chemicals necessarily inside them.
Speaker 1: If they are just as efficient or more so, then
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense to go and switch to a We're
Speaker 1: gonna get back to our discussion about how oh LEDs
Speaker 1: work and what they are all about in just a second,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: There are actually several different types of oh LAD screens
Speaker 1: just LAD displays. We talked about the foldable oh LEDs. Now,
Speaker 1: these are using a substrate that is flexible. So you know,
Speaker 1: your typical substrate. When I think of substrate, I think
Speaker 1: of something that is that is, you know, pretty solid,
Speaker 1: or sometimes it can be a little brittle or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't bend. It's not bendi bendy. Right. Well.
Speaker 1: The the idea being that you're going to build your
Speaker 1: circuit material on top of this material. So I mean
Speaker 1: you're this it's a board, so you you know, you're
Speaker 1: I'm going to add the stuff to it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Usually you want something that's fairly solid, although you know,
Speaker 1: obviously for other applications you would need something that's flexible.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you want to create a display on
Speaker 1: say a jacket, which might very well be something not
Speaker 1: necessarily that the consumer would ever see. But let's say
Speaker 1: an advertising company creates this, uh, this type of of
Speaker 1: jacket that can have a flexible screen on the back
Speaker 1: of it, and then next thing you know, you've got
Speaker 1: this new way for at trade shows where people can
Speaker 1: show off cool technology and it's literally playing on their backs. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I could even imagine it going so far
Speaker 1: as to let's say you've got a courier service and
Speaker 1: you are sponsored, they run ads on your back as
Speaker 1: you you're a bike courier. I look forward to seeing that.
Speaker 1: I look forward to seeing all the accidents that will
Speaker 1: happen as result people turning their heads to see what
Speaker 1: to watch. Yeah, they're like, I want to follow this
Speaker 1: guy another mile. I have to see how this turns out.
Speaker 1: Clearly that if you did that, you would have to
Speaker 1: make very visually stunning types of ads that don't need
Speaker 1: any audio. That would be that would be the real
Speaker 1: challenge there. Look, I'm just trying. I'm just I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to create some jobs out there. That's what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do. Okay, But you also have you have
Speaker 1: your passive matrix oh LED. Now passive matrix, oh lads.
Speaker 1: You know we talked about the cathodes and the anodes. Well,
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily a sheet on top of you know,
Speaker 1: when I said sandwich, it sounds like you're talking about
Speaker 1: solid sheet. That's not necessarily the case, although that can
Speaker 1: be done a passive matrix oh LED. What it does
Speaker 1: is it arranges the cathodes and anodes into strips, and
Speaker 1: one sets strips are vertical and the other sets strips
Speaker 1: are horizontal. So you could think of it like all
Speaker 1: the anodes are streets and all the cathodes are avenues.
Speaker 1: So at these intersections where the cathode and and O
Speaker 1: meat that's where you have your pixels and your pixels
Speaker 1: of course, that's the point of light. So when you
Speaker 1: talk about how many pixels the display has, as so
Speaker 1: many points of light it is capable of displaying at
Speaker 1: one time more than that, it would be a very
Speaker 1: low resolution television. Uh. The so this is one way
Speaker 1: of doing that where you have the just at the
Speaker 1: intersections of these strips, that's where the pixels are uh.
Speaker 1: Not terribly efficient compared to other oh leads and uh
Speaker 1: and also for all of these screens, if you're wondering
Speaker 1: about controlling brightness, that's a function of how much electricity
Speaker 1: is flowing through the system. If you're pouring more juice
Speaker 1: into it, it's gonna be brighter less juice not as bright,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. Next, we have the active matrix OH
Speaker 1: lead and this has a full sheet of the cathode
Speaker 1: and and it's sort of like the sandwich example I
Speaker 1: was giving earlier. So in this case, there is a
Speaker 1: film transistor that is uh gotta. It's an anode layer overlay,
Speaker 1: and that's what forms the matrix. Uh not the kind
Speaker 1: that NEO goes through with all the zeros and ones,
Speaker 1: but this in the it forms the same feature as
Speaker 1: the intersections on the passive matrix. OH lead, tank, I
Speaker 1: eat an exit. Oh gosh, wow, out of all of those,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm surprised you didn't say I know kung
Speaker 1: fu or just whoa uh you got your transparent oh lads.
Speaker 1: Now these are really super cool. Like everything every single
Speaker 1: element in this oh lead is transparent. So when light
Speaker 1: is uh is flowing through this system, then you see
Speaker 1: it projected within a clear screen, and when it's not,
Speaker 1: you can just look through the screen. Now, this is
Speaker 1: used in things like heads up displays, so you know
Speaker 1: you're flying exactly flying a plane, driving a car or whatever.
Speaker 1: If you've got a heads up display that can show
Speaker 1: within the uh the windscreen or or cockpit screen or whatever,
Speaker 1: that is very likely a transparent oh lad. I've also
Speaker 1: seen this used in smart Windows, which was something new.
Speaker 1: I mean, I had heard about smart windows before, but
Speaker 1: it was the first time I had seen one was
Speaker 1: at CS where I think it was Samsung that had it.
Speaker 1: Where it's a smart window. What that could display information
Speaker 1: and it could do things that give you like little
Speaker 1: information like news items or the weather or whatever. Although
Speaker 1: when you're looking out a window, if you need a
Speaker 1: weather report, when you're looking out a window, you're not
Speaker 1: being terribly observant. Well, it might be nice to know
Speaker 1: what the temperature is going to be. You can open
Speaker 1: the window. Oh okay, all right, so you're looking at
Speaker 1: the future forecast. Alright, fine, fine, yeah, you know, all right, Okay,
Speaker 1: I withdraw my objection. Uh what about active matrix leeds.
Speaker 1: I talked about those. That's one of the that's the
Speaker 1: one with the thin film transistor. Do you want to
Speaker 1: just okay? Now they used as a lot in the phones.
Speaker 1: So oh yes, yes, yes, yes, that's the one that
Speaker 1: does have that thin film transistor I was talking about.
Speaker 1: That's the one that ends up taking the place of
Speaker 1: the intersections. The thin film transistor itself has the connections
Speaker 1: on it on the anode side where it activates where
Speaker 1: the pixels are, and these pixels are active the fact
Speaker 1: that they are so thin is a benefit when you're
Speaker 1: talking about these electronic devices. It makes it so much
Speaker 1: easier to uh, you know, fit it into these things
Speaker 1: tablet form factors and smartphones. Yeah, if we were still
Speaker 1: using if we were using things like l c D
Speaker 1: technology for all of these devices, they would be significantly
Speaker 1: or at least noticeably larger, like thicker and and somewhat heavier.
Speaker 1: And I mean heavy being a relative thing. But in
Speaker 1: the case of it, every ounce counts. Yeah, and in
Speaker 1: a tablet or something like that, you know, if it
Speaker 1: adds six ounces. Yeah. There's one more type of O
Speaker 1: lead thy talk about, which is the top emitting OH lead.
Speaker 1: And this has got a substrate that is either opaque
Speaker 1: or reflective, and they are often used. This is often
Speaker 1: uh like this, this is just one subtype of O lead.
Speaker 1: It can actually be combined with another type of O lead. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, that active matrix old we were just
Speaker 1: talking about, that method of display could be combined with
Speaker 1: the top admitting OH lead. Uh. And this is something
Speaker 1: that's often used in things like smart cards. Future Jonathan
Speaker 1: here saying, hey, these old leads are pretty great. I
Speaker 1: bet pasted Jonathan and Chris would have really dug them. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's typ for us to take another quick break to
Speaker 1: take our sponsor. So lots of different applications of oh leads,
Speaker 1: not just uh displays on phones or um or TVs
Speaker 1: or or even you know, computer monitors that kind of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's interest seeing because even though it sounds pretty complex,
Speaker 1: really it's simpler than things like l c D technology.
Speaker 1: It is. It is much simpler in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things, um, even though it's more advanced technology, and
Speaker 1: it's taken years to kind of get the prototype, the
Speaker 1: manufacturing process efficient enough so that we can build screens
Speaker 1: that are at the size that we're used to. Even so,
Speaker 1: you know, we have mentioned that, yes, there are television
Speaker 1: screens coming out like large ones TVs that use oh
Speaker 1: LAD displays. They are incredibly thin, like to the point
Speaker 1: where you can't even really get a good picture of
Speaker 1: them when you look at them in profile. UM. However,
Speaker 1: they also tend to cost a princely some Yes, that's
Speaker 1: what I was getting at, is that we have reached
Speaker 1: the point where the manufacturing process has allowed us to
Speaker 1: build these, but they're still prohibitively expensive. For I'd say
Speaker 1: the majority of the consumer market, new TV is likely
Speaker 1: to cost you several thousand dollars. We're talking like ten
Speaker 1: grand easy, ten tho dollars for lad screen easy. Um
Speaker 1: that that's a lot of money for a new television set.
Speaker 1: I would not be prepared to spend that much on
Speaker 1: a TV. And if you're talking about using a competing
Speaker 1: technology that costs say one fifth of that, you know
Speaker 1: or or or yeah or less? Well, yeah, it depends
Speaker 1: I think the last thing. So for example, I I
Speaker 1: purchased an l E ED l c D h D
Speaker 1: t V for um way less than that, like less
Speaker 1: than a tenth of that. And so you look at
Speaker 1: that and you're you're saying, yeah, the the technology, the
Speaker 1: display technology is clearly superior in that clearly clearly huh,
Speaker 1: in that it's got a very crisp picture. The colors
Speaker 1: are are very true true blacks. Yes, because you don't
Speaker 1: have that backlighting, just like plasma. Plasma does not have backlighting,
Speaker 1: but l c D does, which is why if you've
Speaker 1: ever had l C D television new mine is an
Speaker 1: l c D t D. It's just back split by
Speaker 1: l E D S. Yeah, so that's why L E
Speaker 1: D l C D. Yeah, so when you both. But
Speaker 1: but if you're watching in a dark room and it's
Speaker 1: a scene that is like someone walks into a pitch
Speaker 1: black room in the house, or there's suddenly like a
Speaker 1: blindfolds being put on or whatever, you start to notice like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, my my screen is actually kind of glowing,
Speaker 1: like it's not really black. It's just really dark, and
Speaker 1: I can see that there's light trying to shine through. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's pitch gray in there. Yeah, that's not a true black.
Speaker 1: But oh lads, and uh and true l E D
Speaker 1: t v s and um uh plasma TVs they have
Speaker 1: true blacks where because there's no light coming through right
Speaker 1: that that part of the screen is inactive, So it's
Speaker 1: as dark as it's gonna get. Um. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: another nice thing that the color ratios on these contrast
Speaker 1: ratios are really really good. The but yeah, it's even
Speaker 1: though it's superior, it's just it's gonna take a while
Speaker 1: before that price is gonna drop low enough for it
Speaker 1: to be within the reach of the average consumer, I think. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the flexible displays are are always off too. I
Speaker 1: think those will probably we'll price see those used in
Speaker 1: commercial projects first. Oh sure, well, I mean that's where
Speaker 1: the money is. People are gonna be willing to spend
Speaker 1: that for their company to do advertising or to do whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure some mogul will add them to their UM
Speaker 1: sports stadium just because they can. Yeah. Now, eventually, look
Speaker 1: at what I got. Yeah, eventually we may see that
Speaker 1: incorporate into consumer goods. Like I could imagine a like
Speaker 1: an o lad bracelet, right, like a thick oh lad
Speaker 1: bracelet that fits arounder wrist and it can display the time,
Speaker 1: and it can do other suff sure where it would
Speaker 1: be really thin, so you can have one that is
Speaker 1: you know, is you can even get some of different lengths,
Speaker 1: so you can get one that fits your wrist really snugly,
Speaker 1: and then you can show all this uh this UM
Speaker 1: content off, Yes snugly, and the battery and and processor
Speaker 1: and everything would be on the underside of it, so
Speaker 1: it's not always on display. Uh that unless you're you know,
Speaker 1: a nurse, in which cases the other way around. Uh
Speaker 1: the but yeah, that I could easily see that happening
Speaker 1: further down the line. Um, And the potential for oh
Speaker 1: LEDs is pretty high. I mean we're like I said,
Speaker 1: We've already seen it in consumer goods like like smartphones
Speaker 1: and tablets, where it's really helped make these things as
Speaker 1: sleek and slender as they possibly can be. I can't
Speaker 1: wait to see by the time this podcast goes out,
Speaker 1: will know more about it. But I can't wait to
Speaker 1: see how the new iPad looks, UM. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: that it's going to be using an organic light emitting
Speaker 1: diode screen, possibly a retin a display. We don't know
Speaker 1: because as we're recording this it's the week before Apple
Speaker 1: has its big announcement. Maybe it won't be an iPad
Speaker 1: it all. Yeah, that's true, and I could come out
Speaker 1: that the March seventh, uh discussion it has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with an iPad, in which case I'll just be like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess we're waiting around, but I would be surprised
Speaker 1: to see that because the iPad two came out in
Speaker 1: large last year. Yeah, whenever south By Southwest rolls around,
Speaker 1: that's when it's time for a new iPad. Al right, guys, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that wraps up our discussion on oh LEDs UM.
Speaker 1: They're pretty cool and yeah, if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about them, please go to how Stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and look at how oh LED's work. We have
Speaker 1: a lot of of information on it. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of different illustrations that show this process of the
Speaker 1: electrons moving from the cathode to the an out and
Speaker 1: exactly how that creates the the light that these layers
Speaker 1: are emitting. Um, it's very interesting stuff and it makes
Speaker 1: it a lot easier to understand. And we have come
Speaker 1: to the conclusion, my friends, of yet another classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. I hope you enjoyed it. I know
Speaker 1: I did. And if you have any suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff or questions or comments, send them
Speaker 1: my way. The email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, or you can drop me a line
Speaker 1: on various social media. If you want to learn how
Speaker 1: to contact me there, head on over to our website
Speaker 1: that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You also see the
Speaker 1: archive of all the old episodes. Check those out. There
Speaker 1: might be something awesome that you've missed and you'll really
Speaker 1: love it. If you don't see something there, then write
Speaker 1: to me tell me what you want to hear and
Speaker 1: I will work on that. As for my merchandise store,
Speaker 1: I know you're asking about it, So sweet of you.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you where you can go te public dot
Speaker 1: com slash tech Stuff. There you're going to find all
Speaker 1: the cool designs for tech stuff on various products. And
Speaker 1: every purchase you make goes to help the show. And
Speaker 1: you know what, it helps you too, We all get helped.
Speaker 1: You know. It's a rising tide. It lifts all ships.
Speaker 1: All right, enough nonsense from me. I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com