A team of scientists from the United States, Singapore and China have created a new LED that uses technology based on video billboards that can now be turned into flexible displays.
The new inorganic LEDs are tiny, ultra-thin and are able to shine brighter and longer than regular LEDs. They can be placed in clothing, used as tail lights and utilized in a laundry list of other products. Essentially, researchers printed large arrays of ultra-thin, ultra-small inorganic LEDs that were interconnected, creating a new high-resolution display that is impressive to look at.
Regular inorganic LEDs are bright and long-lasting, but companies have discovered the technology is expensive and very hard to manufacturer. Organic LEDs are cheaper and easier to manufacture, but aren't as robust and are extremely sensitive to oxygen and moisture -- researchers, however, were able to combine both the positives of both technologies in this case.
It's also possible it can be used in roll up TV screens as well as in biotechnology, researchers noted.
"[This] enables new kinds of 'form factors' that would allow you to put lighting sources on curved surfaces or in corners, places where you can't put light sources nowadays," according to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor John Rogers, who spoke with the BBC during a recent interview.
In the future, it's possible t-shirts and jackets will soon have an electronic billboard built directly into the clothing.
