Your Next Smartphone Could Feature an Elastic Display
The era of flexible electronics is upon us.
In a new study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, American and Chinese researchers developed an incredibly elastic material that can be used to make stretchable and bendable screens for smart devices—functional even when stretched out to twice its size. These stretchable materials could augment the wide variety of applications offered by the growing market of wearable technologies, potentially changing how we check our social media feeds, watch videos, monitor personal heart rates, and more.
Zhenan Bao, a chemical engineer at Stanford University who led the new study, told The Daily Beast that her team created the new material by mixing a light-emitting compound called Super Yellow with the springy, rubber-like polyurethane. In most circumstances, mixing two compounds like this would result in a material that is ill-suited to conduct electricity.
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