Samsung SDI and Bundesdruckerei have developed an electronic passport featuring a slim and bendable AMOLED (Organic Light Emitting Diodes) display, that the companies believe will lead to faster identification at borders, better protection against forgery and greater information control for the document holder.

Display manufacturer Samsung SDI developed a robust colour display 300µm thick, comprising an active matrix with AMOLED. This means that an active electronic circuit with low power consumption is located behind every pixel of the display. The materials used for the display are heat-resistant, so that the passport card can be laminated and so protected against manipulation.

Even with the integrated display, the data page of the ePassport, which is made of polycarbonate, is just 700µm.

For its part in this collaboration, German security company Bundesdruckerei developed the required contactless technology. The display is activated via the power provided by a contactless reader, so that the document itself does not require any batteries. 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.

Ulrich Hamann, CEO, Bundesdruckerei, explained: “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.”

The integrated display technology could be used to show for example, the border crossings documented up to now by stamps in the passport. 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 control.