With graphene-based electrodes, flexible and transparent electronics has taken another step towards reality. According to a release, Rice University’s James Tour has created thin films that may revolutionise touch-screen displays, solar panels and LED lighting. The research was reported in the online edition of ACS Nano.
Flexible, see-through video screens may be the ‘killer app’ that finally puts grapheme—the highly touted single-atom-thick form of carbon—into the commercial spotlight, Tour said. Combined with other flexible, transparent electronic components that are being developed, the breakthrough could lead to computers that one can wrap around the wrist and solar cells that can be wrapped around just about anything.
The lab’s hybrid graphene film may replace indium tin oxide (ITO), a commercial product widely used as a transparent and conductive coating. It’s the essential element in virtually all flat-panel displays, including touch screens on smart phones and iPads. It is also a part of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) and solar cells. ITO works well in all these applications, though it has several disadvantages. Indium is increasingly rare and expensive. It’s also brittle, which heightens the risk of a screen cracking when a smart phone is dropped and further rules ITO out as the basis for flexible displays.
