Stretchy, rubber-like OLED has emerged from Japan with The Mainichi Daily News reporting that researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a new kind of organic electroluminescent (EL) display that can bend and deform. The English language news site of the Japan newspaper group said the researchers had demonstrated a face-shaped display showing changing expressions and a spherical screen that displayed weather information.
The research team, led by Takao Someya, professor of electronic engineering, sprayed a layer of carbon nanotubes with a fluoro-rubber compound to produce a stretchy, conductive material. Current prototypes are 100 square centimetres, have a resolution of 256 monochrome pixels and it is claimed, can be folded 1,000 times without an impact on quality.
Someya was quoted in The Mainichi Daily News as saying: “In the future, displays that once had to be flat can be made spherical, or even movingâ€. He suggested future applications that included a human-shaped display that could be used to show medical diagnosis data.
The research team’s findings were published in May’s online edition of science journal, Nature Materials.