Academics at SCUT and their colleagues recently revealed a latest scientific finding, demonstrating a novel type of low-cost conductive paper that has the potential to be used as a material for flexible electroluminescent devices.
The study, completed by researchers at SCUT’s State Key Laboratory of Pulp & Paper Engineering and Monash University in Australia, was published on the ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces this April. Since published, it raised broad attention from the media, many of which discussed if the technology has created a new route for future flexible electronics.
For example, during recent years, some of the world’s biggest electronic manufacturers such as Samsung, LG and Lenovo were looking at bendable displays, which may allow them to create devices with functions people have never seen before.
It is only a matter of time that bendable phones will come into our life. The question is: what material it will be made of?
According to the researchers of this new study, currently, flexible electronic devices commonly use plastic materials as the conductive substrates. Paper, in contrast, could be a more favorable choice since it is low-cost, renewable and biodegradable. In addition, it can be easily rolled up, scaled up or tailored, showing much more flexibility than conventional materials.
However, there is one issue standing in the way: the intrinsic conductivity of paper is poor, or in common words, paper cannot conduct electricity. That’s why scientists have been spending years trying to make development in conductive paper, an effort of putting this ancient material into a modern, sophisticated use.
Now their study managed to open a fresh possibility. It demonstrated a “low-cost, reliable and long-term” ionic gel paper that uses soft ionic gels as the coating ink to prepare conductive paper.
The material showed “high electrical durability with negligible bending” that is able to recover signal changes over 5,000 cycles during experiments, and furthermore, it is radically cheap to produce, as low as $1.30 per square meter.
The researchers, in conclusion of their study, believed that paper-based flexible electronics may soon find industrial applications such as functional printing and intelligent packaging, and they looked forward to further steps of the related techniques and broader applications.
Based on materials retrieved from the American Chemical Society
Written and edited by Xu Peimu
