LEDs can stretch like rubber

ERJ staff report (DS)

Los Angeles - Stretchable electronics, an emerging class of modern electronic materials that can bend and stretch, have the potential to be used in a wide range of applications, including wearable electronics, "smart skins" and minimally invasive biomedical devices that can move with the body.

Now, researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have demonstrated for the first time an intrinsically stretchable polymer light-emitting device. They developed a simple process to fabricate the transparent devices using single-walled carbon nanotube polymer composite electrodes. The interpenetrating networks of nanotubes and the polymer matrix in the surface layer of the composites lead to low sheet resistance, high transparency, high compliance and low surface roughness.

This research was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Materials and is available online at http://bit.ly/ngbZ5w.

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Press release from UCLA

Academic paper in 28 July issue of Advanced Materials