An Indian-American researcher has created a new kind of full-color display that’s a fraction of the width of a human hair and just as flexible.
Debashis Chanda and his team who work at the University of Florida, made the new invention.
“All manmade displays like LCD and LED are rigid, brittle and bulky. But you look at an octopus. He can create colour on the skin itself covering a complex body contour and it is stretchable and flexible,” said professor Chanda.
The new technology will allow the users to change the colour of their dresses in the blink of an eye.
“Your camouflage, your clothing, your fashion items – all of that could change,” he said.
Professor Chanda claims his research was inspired by nature.
Traditional displays like those on a mobile phone require a light source, filters and a glass plates.
But animals like chameleons, octopuses and squids are born with thin, flexible, colour-changing displays that don’t need a light source – their skin.
‘That was the motivation: Can we take some inspiration from biology and create a skin-like display?’
Modern day electronics like televisions, computer screens and mobile devices which claim to have super thin displays are very bulky and thick when compared to what the researchers have used, which is only about few microns thick, compared to a 100-micron-thick human hair.
The impact could be a new generation of displays that till now were never even thought of.
“This is a cheap way of making displays on a flexible substrate with full-colour generation.”
(With inputs from IANS)