Thermal effects and scaling in organic light-emitting flat-panel displays

The temperature rise in flat-panel displays without forced air cooling has been both modeled and experimentally measured as a function of the display size. Both radiation and convection are important processes for the transfer of heat to the ambient. Because of much poorer convection and the lack of lateral heat transport at large dimensions, for a fixed power density large displays are expected to be substantially hotter than small displays. This could adversely impact the reliability of large displays based on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) technology.