14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have invented an elastic, organic light-emitting device, or OLED, that happens to be transparent.
It's not a display just yet, but it's basically a bust stop away from becoming one. And really, an OLED that can be stretched, twisted and folded at room temperature, without lasting consequences, isn't about to be set aside and forgotten.
"Our new material is the building block for fully stretchable electronics for consumer devices," said Qibing Pei, a UCLA professor of materials science and engineering and principal investigator on the research.
To prove their point, they stretched and restretched the OLED 1,000 times, elongating it by 30%. Even after that, it worked fine, though perhaps not at the original level. Still, some final touches will probably remove wear almost completely.
A single layer of an electro-luminescent polymer blend was used to make the material, sandwiched between a pair of new transparent elastic composite electrodes (each a network of silver nanowires inlaid into a rubbery polymer).
Check out the video. You know you want to.