Electronic Colour-changing Fabric Demonstrated

A textile that uses electricity to change colour on command has been demonstrated by a textile designer from Hungary.

The Chromosonic project indicates one future route for designing clothing which harnesses innovations in wearable electronics to enhance the owner's interaction with their environment.

External stimuli
To make Chromosonic, Budapest-based Judit Eszter Karpati, screen-printed thermocrhomatic dyes on to a fabric. The standard fibres were interwoven with thin nichrome wires which are driven by four 24V industrial DC power supplies. When the power supplies are turned on, the wires quickly heat-up and the thermochromatic dyes react to change the colour of the patterned fabric from blue, red or black to white. In a demonstration model, the effect takes only a few seconds to become apparent.

The four power supplies are controlled be an Audrino-programmed microcontroller and a set of 20 circuit boards.

Besides heat, Chromosonic also reacts when pressure is applied to it.

Dancewear
In trials, Karpati has varied the heat flow and hence colour change in the fabric by driving them from computer music files. In the longer term, she sees clothing that reacts to music at a concert or a nightclub as a major potential market for smart clothing made using a future version Chromosonic.

Karpati says: 'My main interest in textile design is the dynamically changing surfaces, structures, and integrating interactive technologies into textiles.'

Beyond novelty
The current sample of Chromosonic, with its multiple power supplies and circuit boards is impractical for converting into a garment. However as proof-of-concept it is interesting as both fashion designers and the military have expressed an interest in producing similar effects.

The London fashion house CuteCircuit has been pioneering clothing with built-in electronics for several years. This has included a dress with 2000 LEDs which was linked to the social messaging service Twitter and worn by the pop singer Nicole Scherzinger in 2012.

More recently mimicking Kapati's interest CuteCircuit designed a jacket that reacted in response to music and the noise of a Mercedes Benz E63 AMG engine, in a television advertisement for the car firm.

For the military, garments that change colour to directly reflect the environment in which they were placed could evidently be a major step forward in camouflage. Using OLEDs mounted on fabric to do this has been advocated for some time, to create a proto-invisibility cloak.

Weight and see
In the short-term, the weight of batteries and components to power these electronic fabrics makes them prohibitive for garments. As such the technology is much more likely to be used on static fabrics like curtains and carpets or vehicles like tanks or ships - where the extra weight would be less of a challenge or.

A significant development may come from the increasing range of lightweight on-body charging devices which are being developed to support the surge in interest in wearable electronic devices - though Chromosonic's technology will always require a fair amount of power to drive the nichrome heating wires. If a solution can be produced, smart reactive electronic garments could also have a role in other segments like survival and safety clothing. 

Beck’s Beer Uses Interactive Electronics Poster for Music Promotion

The New Zealand arm of the beer brand Beck's has deployed the first on-street interactive electronic poster to support an ongoing music themed promotion campaign.

Across New Zealand Music Month, which runs in May, a series of the posters have been put up in cities across the country. These include printed touch sensors and conductive circuits linked to speakers which play songs by contemporary New Zealand bands like the Phoenix Foundation and Super Villains (RMC). Fans can download a smartphone app to customise the audio output of the posters.

A video showing the poster is shown below. It is the creation of local advertising agency Shine. The posters represent the first public use of technology that was first demonstrated by UK firm Novalia in 2012. 

Pixelligent has announced that it has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the US Department of Energy (DoE) to evolve its OLED materials for roll-to-roll production.

Pixclear 
The deal will be run through the DoE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The work will centre on the ORNL's state-of-the-art Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) in Tennessee. Under the terms of the CRADA Pixelligent will aim to optimise its Pixclear OLED materials for use in a prototype roll-to-roll production line being established at the MDF.

Pixelligent's Pixclear materials use nanocrystal dispersions to dramatically increase the luminosity of LEDs and OLEDs in lighting. They operate by ensure a clear alignment in the refractive index between organic and inorganic lighting materials, which delivers increased light levels for a lower energy input.

Craig Bandes, CEO of Pixelligent, says: 'This CRADA is further evidence of Pixelligent's leadership position in the industry. Our ground-breaking materials are being used to solve important technical and commercial problems in advanced lighting and display. Pixelligent's materials are uniquely suited to both dramatically increase refractive index for greater light output, as well as facilitate integration into low-cost manufacturing technologies.'

Government priority
The DoE has chosen Baltimore-based, Pixelligent to work with in the CRADA because it has identified OLED lighting as a key priority to cut US domestic energy consumption - especially in architectural applications. The DoE notes that although improvement is being made, support is still necessary to push technical innovation forward.

It estimates that for OLEDs to become commercially viable there needs to be a drop in panel prices. As part of a long-term strategy it has committed to helping to reduce the price of OLED light from the 2012 price of $180 (€140) per kilolumen (klm) to $25/klm by 2015, and just $9/klm by 2020. A key component of realising this 95% price reduction is to allow cheap roll-to-roll production on an industrial scale.

The global market of OLEDs for lighting in 2023 is projected to be $1.3 billion (€0.95 billion) - well behind predictions for its use in screens for consumer products which could reach €23 billion by the end of this decade.

Previous support
This is not the first support offered to Pixelligent by the DoE, in January 2014, it received support to cooperate with OLEDWorks LLC in a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programme. The DoE is also channelling funds to other US OLED lighting development firms like Pittsburgh's PPG.

Amazon Opens Wearable Technology Hub

The maturing of the market for wearable electronic devices was signalled at the beginning of May when Amazon opened a dedicated space for them on its website.

The new section on the US-website of the world's largest online retailer divides products into the following categories - healthcare, fitness and wellbeing, cameras, smart watches, and children and pets. The visitor is supported by buying guides, customer and professional reviews within a familiar amazon.com page layout.

A cornerstone of buying activity in the developed world, Amazon can provide a useful snapshot of the evolution of the wearable electronics market. Of the five categories over half of the items for sale (282 out of 389) were for equipment in the fitness and wellbeing category. 

Ten-inch Samsung OLED tablet set for release on 12 June

Samsung is planning to unveil its latest tablet computers carrying the largest AMOLED screens ever seen in such devices on 12 June, according to reports in the Korea Times.

Launch
There will be two new models of Samsung Galaxy range, one incorporating an 8.4 inch (213mm) OLED screen and one with a 10.5 inch (267mm) display. Both will be debuted at the event in June, it is rumoured that the launch will take place in New York.

The launch will be an important one for the Korean firm as it seeks to translate its technical lead in OLED screen manufacture into products that outperform its rivals - especially Apple. A key target for the new Samsung tablets will be the iPad Air with its 9.7 inch LED backlight screen which was introduced in October 2013.

World leader bid
Samsung has pledged to become the world leader in tablet computer sales by 2015. To do this they will have to learn the lessons from its first OLED display tablet 7.7 inch Galaxy Tab in 2012, which suffered from limited sales and sparked a legal dispute with Apple. 

Lightweight Patch Converts Body Heat to Electricity

A thin flexible patch for generating electrical power from body heat has been developed by a team working at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). If this could be evolved into a production model it would be a vital component to boosting the endurance of wearable electronic devices; including those used in home healthcare applications.

Thermoelectrics
The KAIST thermoelectric (TE) patch is formed by interweaving glass fibres. This is then impregnated with liquid pastes based on bismuth telluride and antimony telluride. These materials exploit the difference in surface temperature between the skin on one side and air temperature on the other to produce an electrical current.

Creating body-mounted thermoelectric generators is an idea that has been indiscussion for some years - with the heat-converting thermocouples being printed onto a plastic or other flexible substrate. However the new KAIST prototype represents a step forward in performance as using glass fibres allows a hitherto unseen optimisation of thermoelectrical and physical performance.

The research which has spawned the new patch was published on 14 March in the journalEnergy and Environmental Science.

Glass fibre advance
Typically the thermoelectric effect has relied on an inorganic material like bismuth telluride. These give strong thermoelectric performance but need to be mounted on thick rigid ceramic or aluminium oxide substrates. Less rigid organic materials like carbon nanotubes can be engineered to have a thermoelectric effect however the rate of power generation is inferior to telluride compounds.

The KAIST prototype's design allowed both antimony telluride and bismuth telluride to permeate through the glass fibre matrix and form a series of films of thermoelectric materials several hundreds of micron thick. This means a series of hundreds of thermoelectric material d

40mW
If a sample of the new material was made into a wearable 100mmx100mm pad, it is projected to generate 40mW of power given a 17.2°C difference between the skin and ambient temperature.

Besides being low weight, the glass fibres patch has a bend radius of 20mm and there is no observed detrimental impact on performance even after being bent 120 times. This allows the KAIST device to be easily fitted and retained on the skin.

Project leader Byung Jin Cho says: 'Our technology presents an easy and simple way of fabricating an extremely flexible, light, and high-performance TE generator. The glass fabric itself serves as the upper and lower substrates of a thermoelectric generator, keeping the inorganic TE materials in between. This is quite a revolutionary approach to design a generator.'

Powering wearables
One major technical challenge for consumer wearable electronics has been to liberate devices like smartwatches from the need for frequent recharging, thereby aiding a seamless integration into consumers' lives. While work to develop longer lasting flexible batteries is advancing, the first generation of these require a wearable device to make a trade-off between having a lower power draw - which often equates to lower functionality - or requiring frequent recharging which is inconvenient for the user.

For example, early versions of Google Glass now undergoing trials have a 570 mAh lithium ion battery mounted. This can be drained after between 3-5 hours of use, and quicker if power-hungry functions like video recording and playing are engaged. The battery then takes two hours to recharge.

Cheap and easily conformable body mounted thermoelectric generator would then provide an efficient means to replenish a battery during use.

Medical and beyond
For very low power applications the thermoelectric generator itself might be enough. For example, in a body mounted label with a simple biomonitoring function. A key early market for this will be healthcare, where organisations are investigating the distance monitoring of patients as a promising way to minimise the amount of time clinicians spend on physical visits and examinations. This is especially relevant for managing chronic conditions, such as blood pressure, in ageing populations.

The British military has also investigated the potential of using thermoelectric materials for its soldiers on operations.

Thermoelectric generators can work on any surface where there is a temperature difference this opens up opportunities for low-power sensors or other devices in a wide range of industries. Cho says: 'We expect that this technology will find further applications in scale-up systems such as automobiles, factories, aircrafts, and vessels where we see abundant thermal energy being wasted.'

Dyesol Reports 9% Efficient Dye Solar Cell

An Australian photovoltaics company has managed to achieve a 9% energy conversion rate in a dye solar panel.

The company, Dyesol, believes this is a record level of efficiency for a solar panel of this type.

The success was due to an undisclosed new material used in the firm's solid-state strip cells. These are made at its manufacturing site in New South Wales. Dyesol believes that further improvement can produce units with a 12% efficiency yield at a commercially viable price.

Among the areas Dyesol has worked on are more effective blocking area materials and high stability hole transport layers.

Dyesol is also investigating methods for high-speed throughput and industrial scale deposition techniques to bring the innovative cells to the domestic and a wider Asian market. It is reported to be in consultation with an Australian materials company to achieve this.

Rabbit Proto puts conductive ink into 3D printing

A team from Stanford University has developed a new printhead which will allow printed electronics to be integrated into products via 3D printing.

Rabbit
The Rabbit Proto printhead, combines a standard 3D print nozzle for depositing plastics with a 1.4mm extruder nozzle for conductive ink. Working from a computer-aided design (CAD) file the 3D printer can lay down internal circuitry as it makes the rests of the product.

The first Rabbit models are due for release in July 2014, they will cost around €250 for a syringe to be fitted in parallel with a 3D extruder, €325 for an integrated printhead and €1,800 for a full RepRap 3D printer with it in installed. It is can be used with an array of 3D plastics like, PLA, nylons and ABS. The Rabbit printer is currently configured to operate using a silver-filled silicone ink, although development work is underway with Bare Conductive to produce a less costly graphite-based alternative.

3D print future
Currently 3D printing is limited to a few niche but specialist applications like making customised or replacement parts for vehicles and aircraft; a market which will be worth €5 billion by 2025. There is a great deal of potential for it to disrupt a number of industries -including the manufacture of electrical equipment - as it progresses towards the end of the decade.

Anthony Vicari is a research analyst at Lux Research who has recently completed a report on 3D print markets. He says: 'At this point [3D printing for electrical devices] is one area that it developing very rapidly; there is a lot going on. Designers are thinking what they have not thought before.'

There are challenges associated with 3D production. As Vicari explains: 'Currently the process is very slow, if you are making 100,000 units of something 3D printing is not the right tool, in terms of through-put it is just not feasible - though if you want to make 50 it is very good.'

Exclusive content
Developments in technology, like Rabbit Proto; the expiry of patents; falling 3D plastic and equipment prices; and a growing interest from major manufacturers like GE, are converging to make 3D printing a major trend in years to come. To fully realise this opportunity members of the plastic electronics industry will need to appreciate several unique aspects of 3D print production to take full advantage.

Novacentrix buys out PChem’s nanosilver ink range

Novacentrix, a US printed electronics firm recently announced that it had bought the nanosilver printing ink technology developed by PChem. The deal includes the intellectual property and other key assets developed by PChem at its site in Pennsylvania.

Novacentrix will continue to market PChem's nanosilver ink range under their original names. This includes, the rapid curing PFI-722 and PXI-4180 flexo inks; PSI-221 and PSI-219 screen printing inks; and the PSPI-700 spray ink.
Novacentrix reports that by moving

production

to its facility in Texas, economies of scale in production will mean it will be able to reduce the price of the nanosilver ink range to customers.

PChem's ink technology has already been used to produce medical sensors at high volume and interactive lottery tickets.
Charles Munson, CEO and president of Novacentrix, says: 'The PChem nanosilver flexo and screen inks have been well known for offering the best conductivity at the lowest cost to address growing and emerging opportunities in the printed electronics space.

'Combined with our existing and soon-to-be-released Metalon-brand ink products, as well as the state-of-the-art PulseForge photonic curing tools, we are better positioned than ever before to serve our customers as a leader in the printed electronics community.'

Q&A on Agfa Si-P1000x nanosilver ink with Peter Willaert

Agfa-Gevaert is launching a new nanosilver conductive ink that could drastically improve the efficiency of fine printing of products using silver. Si-P1000x will be available for supply in commercial volumes later in 2014.

Peter Willaert, product manager for printed electronics at Agfa-Gevaert, SP division, discusses the new ink's potential to disrupt display markets and to open opportunities for new printed electronics applications.

Why did Agfa decide to develop this ink?
We developed Si-P1000x as an alternative for indium tin oxide (ITO). While ITO is the most important transparent conductor used for glass applications in displays, it has limitations in conductivity when applied on polymer (film) substrates due to the requirement to be annealed at high temperature during manufacturing, and its brittleness.
Agfa sought to create a silver nanoparticle technology to apply a metal mesh. A fine, almost invisible metal mesh, or grid, can be combined with a uniform layer of PEDOT:PSS polymer, to boost the overall conductivity while retaining a high transparency.

Are there wider implications for printed electronics?
We realised quickly that the nanosilver inks can also be deployed in markets where traditional flake inks are used. Early customer tests have shown that the ink is compatible with standard processes used for flake inks and those markets are much larger than the still-to-be-developed ITO film replacement market.

How does Si-P1000x perform relative to traditional silver flake inks?
The main advantage of using nanosilver particle technology is a much higher conductivity. You can obtain a target resistance with either a much thinner layer - 1-2µ, versus 10-20 µ - by using a finer printing mesh, or by reducing the dimensions of the printed traces.
In all cases, the coverage obtained with the ink [conductive area per kilogram of ink] will be much higher and, as a bonus, it is possible to print much finer lines and spaces, so this ink supports the ongoing trends for miniaturisation.

Following further development the ink could be applied using flexo, gravure or inkjet. These methods are not suited for traditional flake-based silver inks, which are essentially limited to screen printing.

When will the ink be available?
Orders can be fulfilled immediately on a kilogram scale. The product will be available in 2014 on a 50kg per month scale. We believe this is the first nanosilver ink in the world that is being produced on this scale.

We are currently sampling the product to interested parties and are trying to secure qualification in real-life products.

What are the applications beyond ITO substitution?
We have seen interest from companies that are active in the membrane keyboard market, but that are looking to deploy their expertise in new markets geared towards printed electronics. This is especially true of products where the conductive ink forms a big part of the bill of materials cost. People are looking to reduce the amount of ink they need.

Other companies showing interest in the product are engaged in electronic product code uses, such as RFID and item-level tagging. These companies realise that printing a highly efficient ink will allow them to explore new possibilities in integrating RFID antennas into other objects.

MBraun and Beneq pool OLED expertise for R&D customers

Two plastic electronic equipment suppliers have signed an agreement to mutually develop their products to better serve customers looking to develop OLED production.

This will principally concern UK firm MBraun's equipment for inert gas glove boxes and Finnish company Beneq's atomic layer deposition (ALD) expertise. ALD has received a lot of interest in the past 6 months as a number of firms, like Samsung, have looked to use it for encapsulation of OLEDS sheets as they scale up production in several

applications

.Sampo Ahonen, CEO of Beneq, says: 'Together, Beneq and MBraun will provide customer-specific controlled environment solutions for OLED research, along with academic and corporate needs. We see that it will enable both of our companies to offer greater value to this growing area through our complementary product range.'

UCLA team deliver quicker, cheaper indium TFTs

A new range of thin-film transistors (TFTs) could improve OLED screen performance by 20 times according to their developers.

Indium TFTs
The TFTs have been produced by a research team located at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The new semiconductors have been manufactured out of indium gallium zinc oxide and indium tin zinc oxide as an alternative to traditional amorphous silicon components.

The UCLA's TFT displays improved electron mobility by confining the structure of electron pathways. This can be translated into a quicker, more responsive control of pixels if they were fitted to the back of an OLED or LCD display.
The work has been reported in the journal Advanced Materials on 17 April.

Cheaper manufacturing
The potential of indium based semiconductors has been known for some time however production requires vacuum processing, which combined with rising prices for the metal make them prohibitively expensive. During the project the UCLA researchers have developed a simpler two-stage

application

and heating process.

You Seung Rim of the UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science says: 'The improved mobility represents a breakthrough for solution-processed metal oxide TFTs. Our device's performance is comparable to that of commercial TFTs, but it can be produced at a much lower cost.'

USAF developing wearable sweat sensors for realtime blood test results

A research unit of the United States Air Force (USAF) is investigating the military applications of sweat sensors mounted on a printed electronic plaster.

The skin-mounted label would analyse sweat for biological markers to give results which currently require blood to be drawn and examined in a laboratory.

No more needles
Speaking to USA Today, Josh Hagan, of the USAF's 711th Human Performance Wing explains: 'We are trying to do a couple of things. We are trying to eliminate giant blood draw. We are also trying to get the answers a lot quicker to the people who need them than they are getting them now. We are talking minutes or in real time.'

Immediate diagnosis will benefit the military both in assessing the condition of casualties during transport and evacuation, and allow monitoring of servicemen involved in critical tasks - like piloting a lengthy bombing mission. Integrating the results into a real-time integrated system, would allow medics to prepare medical equipment and allow the pilot to manage their intake of fluids, or stimulants like amphetamines which US pilot take to maintain alertness.

Fitness and healthcare
Similar sweat sensors are also set to be deployed for the wearable electronics fitness market. In Europe French technology centre the Laboratoire d'électronique des technologies de l'information (LETI) hope to fit such sensors to the next generation of the wearable electronic D-Shirt which they help develop and launch earlier this year.

The presence of chemical markers for fatigue or other bodily changes in sweat as well as blood is accepted. But Hagan notes that it remains to be determined how long after a change these will manifest in a person's sweat.

Ultimately it is the US military's goal to incorporate an array of biosensors to help create an individual Human Centric Sensor System for each individual soldier. To aid this goal it has channelled funds to private sector plastic electronics innovators like Soligie and American Semiconductor.

China looks to break into small screen AMOLED market in 2015

A Shanghai company, EverDisplay Optronics, has announced plans to start mass-producing active matrix (AM)OLED panels later in 2014.

EverDisplay
EverDisplay demonstrated prototype OLED displays in 2013. These were for 5.5-inch/6-inch (140mm/152mm) smartphone screens and made on a gen 4.5 (730mm x 920mm) scale.

EverDisplay has now taken the decision to develop this lead into a mass-production line capable of making 15,000 units per month. The company leads a pack of Chinese firms aiming to capitalise on this display technology. According to the Export Import Bank of Korea the initial market will be in smartphones made for domestic Chinese consumers.

Visionox
Closely following EverDisplay is Visionox, a company spun-off from Beijing's Tsinghua University. On 16 April, it announced the development of a 4.3 inch OLED display using an RGB sub-pixel arrangement structure, to achieve a resolution of 570ppi. The company states: '[This] technology has laid a solid foundation for mass production and

application

of AMOLEDs.'

Visionox is reported to be recruiting experts in OLED production from Korea, the US and Taiwan to help establish a new manufacturing line, which it may run in conjunction with BOE Display. Another company based in the capital, BOE has been pursing small AMOLED screens for several years.

Domestic smartphones
Analysis says that the new Chinese OLEDs will initially be used by domestic smartphone producers like Huawei, to produce low and medium-priced units - principally for Chinese users. Digitimes Research predicts that out of 422 million smartphones sold in the country in 2014, 278 million (66%) will be locally made.

As production is stepped up, reduced Chinese labour costs will be translated into lower price panels - provided production quality can be assured. Thus OLED panels from companies like EverDisplay will enjoy a competitive advantage over Samsung, which currently accounts for 90% of world OLED supply. This threatens the Korean firm's dominance as a supplier to both the smartphone and burgeoning wearable electronics markets.

Challenging Samsung
Samsung will likely be forced to look to other display innovations to maintain a technical lead for the screens it supplies into its own brand and other high-end smartphones. It has already announced plans for a gen 6 (1,500mm x 1,850mm) production complex at Asan for flexible screens. This, like EverDisplay's line for rigid OLED sheets, is scheduled to come online in the second half of 2014. Samsung's own Galaxy S6 will be one of the first handsets to carry the display.

Over-investment risk
At least three other Chinese companies are reported to be investigating AMOLED production as they aim to position themselves in a booming market for the future. UBI Research predicts that the global market for OLED materials will undergo 50% growth each year until the end of the decade - rising from $7 billion (€5.1 billion) in 2014 to hit a $75 billion in 2020.

UBI estimates that there will be a transformation in the market as it grows making too tight a focus on smartphone displays a liability. Although they account for 93% of today's OLEDs, by 2020 increased use in large television screens and other products mean smartphone displays will command just 21% of demand.
Concentrating on the low to medium-price handsets from Chinese producers is attractive for now; but if domestic consumers choose to more technically sophisticated foreign models in the future, there is a risk that too much investment will lead to an oversupply as demand for the devices shrinks. This would be similar to the glut, created by aggressive Chinese moves into LED lighting manufacturing at the beginning of this decade.

Printoo plastic electronics development kit sparks interest

Printoo a modular open-source development kit using plastic electronics has been launched.

It is hoped it will emulate the success of conventional electronics platforms like Raspberry Pi.
It is made by Portuguese firm Ynvisible, and includes samples of its own flexible electrochromic displays along with components from other manufacturers. Following a successful crowd-funding appeal on Kickstarter, Ynvisible hope it will help create a community of developers, to accelerate the dissemination of plastic electronics.

Individual Printoo kits will cost between €33 and €380 with the first batches being delivered later this year. A prototype version is shown hear in a video from Ynvisible.

If you want to read more about Printoo, plastic electronic development kits and the potential for a convergence of plastic electronic and 3D printing to produce electrical devices in the future - read our exclusive subscriber content here.

Apple patent revives prospect of desktop OLED keyboard

Apple is pursuing a new type of customisable keyboard based on OLEDs according to a patent published on the website of the US Patent and Trademark Office on 1 May. The new keyboard is designed for use with a desktop computer, specifically Apple's Mac range.

Customisable
The new keyboard combines a series of 'key stacks' incorporating small OLED sheets and touch sensors to mimic the layout of a conventional keyboard. The advantage of using OLEDs is that the letter or other symbol displayed on each key stack can be modified - allowing for a customisable keyboard.

This would be an advantage over standard Qwerty keyboards which lack easily typable routes for symbols commonly used in languages other than English, like accented vowels. It would also be possible to configure it for non-Roman alphabets like Cyrillic, Greek or Kana (Japanese syllabic script), signs used in scientific or mathematical notation, or the personal preference of the user. Furthermore it could be enhanced to display keyboard shortcuts on the OLED screen in the relevant keystack or other information as individual programs were loaded on the computer.

The patent also mentions incorporating touch-gesture control into the new keyboard; along with haptic feedback - where the sensation from the key can alert the user to a function.

Lebedev's concept
The key concept behind the OLED stack keyboard is not unique to Apple - although including gesture communication is. A Russian design studio Lebedev demonstrated the concept back in 2005 with its Optimus Maximus which has a 48x48 pixel, full-colour, 10 frame per second OLED screen integrated into each of 113 keys in a standard layout. It is compatible with PC and Mac operating systems, but requires a fair amount of memory to run; 20 MB of hard disk space, and a 256 MB RAM computer to drive it.
The cost of OLEDs at the time of its commercial release in 2007, put the price to consumers of the Maximus at $2068 (€1492), effectively pricing it out of the market.

Lebedev has subsequently developed the idea of the Maximus to produce the Optimus Popularis. Released commercially in December 2011, it costs €1096. This price saving was achieved by moving from individual OLEDs, and placing the keys on top of a single large LCD touchscreen.

Right time to market
With major electronics firm now committing to high-volume OLED production facilities, the cost of building keyboards on the Lebedev or Apple model are set to drop. This would place the cost of an OLED keyboard at a label which might reasonably tempt consumers. Apple will also have an advantage as it has a small but enthusiastic community of users for its Mac desktops (7.3% according to one calculation from October 2013) - including many graphic designers.Combined with its ability to promote interactivity between its platforms and bundle products for sale, the Californian company is much better positioned to push an OELD customisable keyboard into the mainstream.