ePassports get LED video display

19 May 2008

Korean display manufacturer Samsung SDI and German security printer Bundesdruckerei have demonstrated a passport that features a slim and bendable Organic Light Emitting Diode colour display within a polycarbonate data page. The display can be used to provide a raft of information including a video of the document holder.

According to the suppliers, tommorow’s ID documents will work without contact and without internal batteries. The integration of a display makes electronic ID documents even more difficult to forge and opens up the way for new security applications, they claim.

Samsung SDI developed the display to be just 300µm thick. However, even with the integrated colour display, the data page of the ePassport is still only 700µm thick, the companies claim.

The display comprises an active matrix display with organic light emitting diodes (AMOLED). This means that located behind every pixel of the display is an active electronic circuit with low power consumption. AMOLED displays are said to provide excellent colour images and can be produced in much thinner formats that conventional LCDs.

The materials used for the display are heat-resistant, so that the passport card can be laminated and hence protected against manipulation.

The display is activated via the power provided by a contactless reader, so that the document itself does not require any batteries. The suppliers say that it will be possible to retrieve all kinds of information via the display, for instance, a moving passport image of the document holder, as well as text-based information, such as the passport holder’s address.

"With our innovative, trailblazing technology, such as ‘video identification on card’, we are speeding up border control procedures and, at the same time, setting a new milestone in protection against forgery," says Ulrich Hamann, CEO of Bundesdruckerei.

The integrated display technology could display, for example, documented border crossings, which are usually represented by physical stamps within the passport booklet. The companies say that complex security processes ensure that only authorised individuals can add data. Future documents will themselves be able to provide all the means necessary for authentication. This would mean that the personal data would no longer have to be transmitted to special reading devices, but would remain exclusively in the document and hence in the document holder’s sovereignty.