Researchers have developed new OLED displays that are extremely flexible and can fit around a person’s wrist. This is stated in the University of Chicago’s press release last week.
“One of the most important components of almost every consumer electronics we use today is the display, and we combined knowledge from many different fields to create an entirely new display technology,” said Sihong Wang, professor of molecular engineering, who led the research. With Juan de Pablo, Liv Family Professor of Molecular Engineering.
“This is the grade of material you need so that you can finally design truly flexible displays,” De Pablo added. “This work is truly eye-opening and I hope it will enable many technologies that we haven’t even thought of yet.”
Today’s OLED screens are great for displays, but don’t offer much room for flexibility.
“The materials currently used in these state-of-the-art OLED displays are very fragile; they do not stretch,” Wang said. “Our goal was to create something that retains the electroluminescence of OLEDs, but with flexible polymers.”
And so they did!
“We were able to develop atomic models of interesting new polymers, and with these models, we model what happens to these molecules when you try to pull and bend them,” De Pablo said.
“Now that we understand these properties at the molecular level, we have a framework for developing new materials where flexibility and gloss are optimized.”
Now researchers are setting themselves more ambitious goals.
“My overall dream is to build all the necessary components for a complete wearable electronics system, from sensors to information processing to display,” Wang said. “Having this flexible light-emitting material is another step towards that dream.”
The team also plans to add additional colors to the fluorescence of flexible displays to increase their efficiency and performance.
“The goal is to eventually achieve the same level of performance as existing commercial technologies,” Wang said in a statement.
Source: Port Altele
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