A technology has been developed that completely resolves the chronic “screen crease” issue in foldable smartphones.

KAIST announced on the 20th that a research team led by Professor Lee Pil-seung of the Department of Mechanical Engineering has developed a technology that can solve the screen crease problem, long cited as the biggest weakness of foldable smartphones, and completed domestic patent registration in September last year. The research team has also filed patents in the United States, China, and the European Union (EU), as well as in Korea, in a bid to secure global technological competitiveness.

The “creases” that form as force continues to concentrate on the folding area of the screen make the display look uneven and, with prolonged use, can cause device failure. Global smartphone manufacturers have invested massive research and development budgets to eliminate creases in foldable smartphones, but have not been able to completely remove them.

To address the crease issue, Professor Lee’s team disassembled dozens of used foldable smartphones and conducted repeated experiments. As a result, they devised a solution by newly designing the “adhesion area” between the screen and the supporting plate so that the force applied during folding does not concentrate on a single point but is distributed to the surrounding area. The key is to distribute the load so that no specific area is overstressed, thereby preventing crease formation. In practice, when the research team shone a straight-line LED light on a prototype, the light reflected from the folding area did not bend and remained straight.

The research team expects high industrial applicability, noting that the technology can be extended to various foldable display devices.

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