Stretchable OLEDs Made Possible By Engineers From University Of California
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Oct 26, 2024
Oct 26, 2024
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Ever imagined your cell phone swelled up or #-Link-Snipped-# which can be rolled up? Well, we will soon see this applications become real for the research done in this regard by ULCA engineers who have last month submitted a paper in the online journal Advanced Materials titled #-Link-Snipped-#. Zhibin Yu, Xiaofan Niu, Zhitian Liu, Qibing Pei all of UCLA have taken efforts in this research. The study will give us a boost to make devices which will work even when stretched or in other words, devices which can work under tension.
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This polymer LED can stretch up to 45 percent along one axis while emitting a sky-blue light.| Image Credit: UCLA
Engineers from University of California, Los Angeles have successfully created fully stretchable light emitting diodes or OLED's which work even after being stretched by emitting light when electric current passes through it. Until now it was not possible to achieve this property of maintaining electrical conductivity when a material was subjected to stress. Hence, researchers have turned towards carbon nanotubes to see if they can be a possible help in this regard.
To make this concept work for real, the engineers have devised their own way of creating a stretchable electrical material. They added a liquid polymer to carbon nanotubes which were backed by glass substrate. The liquid polymer after cooling forms a layer of solid plastic which closely surrounds the carbon nanotubes there by excluding any air gap. Next we can get the electrode by peeling away this layer which leaves a smooth, transparent and of course stretchable electrode.
This electrode is then sandwiched in between two layers of light emitting plastic which emit light on account of current flowing through it. However care has to be taken that no air bubble is left in between electrode and plastic to ensure that the electrical circuit is complete. In this way engineers have succeeded in stretching electrodes by 45 % of its original size.
An important phenomenon of this application is that there is no short circuiting of the electrode once you stretch it. However this being just a step forward; more study is required here to improve its performance.  An example of stretching electrical gadgets may be a series of light bulbs which can be stretched to electrical decorate a Christmas tree. In future seeing shrinking mobile phones and stretchable electrical devices won't be a surprise.
See the OLED's working in video below
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#-Link-Snipped-#
This polymer LED can stretch up to 45 percent along one axis while emitting a sky-blue light.| Image Credit: UCLA
Engineers from University of California, Los Angeles have successfully created fully stretchable light emitting diodes or OLED's which work even after being stretched by emitting light when electric current passes through it. Until now it was not possible to achieve this property of maintaining electrical conductivity when a material was subjected to stress. Hence, researchers have turned towards carbon nanotubes to see if they can be a possible help in this regard.
To make this concept work for real, the engineers have devised their own way of creating a stretchable electrical material. They added a liquid polymer to carbon nanotubes which were backed by glass substrate. The liquid polymer after cooling forms a layer of solid plastic which closely surrounds the carbon nanotubes there by excluding any air gap. Next we can get the electrode by peeling away this layer which leaves a smooth, transparent and of course stretchable electrode.
This electrode is then sandwiched in between two layers of light emitting plastic which emit light on account of current flowing through it. However care has to be taken that no air bubble is left in between electrode and plastic to ensure that the electrical circuit is complete. In this way engineers have succeeded in stretching electrodes by 45 % of its original size.
An important phenomenon of this application is that there is no short circuiting of the electrode once you stretch it. However this being just a step forward; more study is required here to improve its performance.  An example of stretching electrical gadgets may be a series of light bulbs which can be stretched to electrical decorate a Christmas tree. In future seeing shrinking mobile phones and stretchable electrical devices won't be a surprise.
See the OLED's working in video below
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