SoylentNews

Phoenix666 writes:

New stretchable, self-healing and illuminating electronic material for wearables and soft robots:

Imagine a flexible digital screen that heals itself when it cracks, or a light-emitting robot that locates survivors in dark, dangerous environments or carries out farming and space exploration tasks. A novel material developed by a team of NUS researchers could turn these ideas into reality.

The new stretchable material, when used in light-emitting capacitor devices, enables highly visible illumination at much lower operating voltages, and is also resilient to damage due to its self-healing properties.

This innovation, called the HELIOS (which stands for Healable, Low-field Illuminating Optoelectronic Stretchable) device, was achieved by Assistant Professor Benjamin Tee and his team from the NUS Institute for Health Innovation & Technology and NUS Materials Science and Engineering.

[...] Unlike existing stretchable light-emitting capacitors, HELIOS enabled devices can turn on at voltages that are four times lower, and achieve illumination that is more than 20 times brighter. It also achieved an illumination of 1460 cd/m² at 2.5 V/µm, the brightest attained by stretchable light-emitting capacitors to date, and is now comparable to the brightness of mobile phone screens. Due to the low power consumption, HELIOS can achieve a longer operating lifetime, be utilized safely in human-machine interfaces, and be powered wirelessly to improve portability.

The researchers say the material promises durability and efficiency.

Journal Reference
Yu Jun Tan, Hareesh Godaba, Ge Chen, et al. A transparent, self-healing and high- κ dielectric for low-field-emission stretchable optoelectronics, Nature Materials (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-019-0548-4)

Original Submission