Flexible

Ordinarily, electronics are made with silicon semiconductors that are rigid, opaque, and about half a millimeter thick. Thanks to research being carried out at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, however, that may be about to change. Led by Dr. Helge Weman and Prof. Bjørn-Ove Fimland, a team there has developed a method of making semiconductors out of graphene. At a thickness of just one micrometer, they are flexible and transparent. Also, because they require so little raw material, they should be considerably cheaper to manufacture than their silicon counterparts.  Read More

We've covered our fair share of flexible electronics, but as far as bendability goes, the flexible batteries developed by LG are truly raising the bar by a couple of notches. The Korean company is working on a battery that is shaped like a cable, and can be bent, tied, or even woven into fine sheets with almost no loss in discharge performance.  Read More

In the quest to develop implantable electronics to monitor the human body from within, flexibility and stretchability have been major hurdles. We’ve seen numerous developments including stretchable LED arrays, an implantable device for measuring the heart’s electrical output, and an electrode array that melts onto the surface of the brain. Now researchers have developed technology that combines a porous polymer and liquid metal that allows electronics to bend and stretch to more than 200 percent their original size.  Read More

Corning announced details of a major new glass design at the eighth annual Display Week in Boston, a trade event hosted by the Society for Information Display. Named Willow Glass, Corning’s new glass is manufactured in such a way that allows it to reach temperatures of up to 500°C (932ºF) while maintaining a thickness of just 100 microns – or about that of a sheet of paper.  Read More

Currently, virtually all touchscreen displays found in our electronic devices rely on a coating of indium tin oxide (ITO). It is used because of its electrical conductivity, its optical transparency, and the ease with which it can be deposited onto a display as a thin film. Using graphene, researchers at the University of Exeter have developed a viable alternative to increasingly expensive ITO that they claim is the “most transparent, lightweight and flexible material ever for conducting electricity.”  Read More

Like most display manufacturers, LG has kept a finger in the flexible e-paper pie. Now, however, the company has announced that its six-inch XGA resolution Electronic Paper Display (EPD) is now in full production, and should be in devices bound for Europe within the next month.  Read More

Here's a question - if piranhas are so ferocious and will attack anything, why aren't they the only fish in the Amazon? Well, in some cases, it's because other fish possess bite-proof armor. The 300-pound (136-kg) Arapaima is just such a fish. In the dry season, when water levels get low, Arapaima are forced to share relatively small bodies of water with piranhas. Their tough-but-flexible scales, however, allow them to remain unharmed. A scientist from the University of California, San Diego is now taking a closer look at those scales, with an eye towards applying their secrets to human technology such as body armor.  Read More

Some day, meshes made from nanowires could be used in devices such as video displays, LEDs, thin-film solar cells, and touch-screens. According to research performed so far, such meshes would be very electrically conductive, cost-effective, and easy to process. What has proven challenging, however, is finding a way of getting the criss-crossed nanowires to fuse together to form that mesh – if pressed or heated, the wires can be damaged. Now, engineers from Stanford University may have found the answer ... just apply light.  Read More

There’s no doubt that we will soon be seeing a lot more in the way of low-cost electronic circuits that have been printed onto common, flexible materials such as plastic, paper or fabric. One of the key technological innovations making this possible is silver ink, which is used to print these circuits’ conductors. While such ink usually incorporates particles of silver suspended in a carrier liquid, a new type of ink created at the University of Illinois forgoes the particle approach, and is said to offer some distinct advantages as a result.  Read More