A research team has developed Fiber-like Light Emitting Diodes, applicable to Wearable Displays

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The Next Generation Wearable Display Using Fiber Based Light Emitting Diodes. Credit: Copyright KAIST

The Next Generation Wearable Display Using Fiber Based Light Emitting Diodes. Credit: Copyright KAIST

Professor Kyung-Cheol Choi and his team from the School of Electrical Engineering at KAIST have developed fiber-like LED’s, which can be applied in wearable displays. Traditional wearable displays were manufactured on a hard substrate, which is later attached to the surface of clothes. Such technique has posed limitations in applying it for wearable displays because inflexible displays were not adequate in practice, and the characteristics of fabric were ignored.

Dip-Coating Process to Create Fiber-Based Light-Emitting Diodes

Dip-Coating Process to Create Fiber-Based Light-Emitting Diodes

Solution? They focused on fibers, a component of fabrics, and developed a fiber-like light emitting diode that has the characteristics of both fabrics and displays. The dip coating process, is to immerse and extract a 3D board that looks like a thread in a solution. Then, the regular levels of organic materials are formed as films on the board. The process allowed the layers of organic materials to be easily created on boards with a 3D structure including a cylinder, which had been difficult in existing processes such as heat coating process. The coating thickness can also be adjustable to hundreds of thousands of nanometers through the control of withdrawal rate.

Fiber-Based Light-Emitting Diodes

Fiber-Based Light-Emitting Diodes

The researchers said that this technology would accelerate the commercialization of fiber based wearable displays since it offers low-cost, mass production using roll-to-roll processing, a technology applied to create electronic devices on a roll of flexible plastics or metal foils.
http://www.kaist.ac.kr/_prog/_board/?code=ed_news&mode=V&no=39041&upr_ntt_no=39041&site_dvs_cd=en&menu_dvs_cd=060101