Screens on laptops, televisions and mobile phones are about to get thinner and may be so flexible that you will be able to bend them and roll then up like a piece of electronic paper. The Economist magazine reports that these thin sheets of plastic will be able to display words and images. This technology is the result of a breakthrough at the Flexible Display Centre at Arizona State University.

Using a novel lithographic process invented by HP Labs, the research arm of Hewlett-Packard, and an electronic ink produced by E Ink, the center's researchers succeeded in printing flexible displays onto long rolls of a special plastic film made by DuPont.

The screens are lightweight and consume only a fraction of the power of a typical liquid-crystal display. Their first use is likely to be by the U.S. Army, which helped pay for the project. The first trials of consumer versions could begin within a few years.

For more on the revolutionary screen:
- see this Economist.com article

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