Stretchy, Bendy, Flexible LEDs: They’re Also Cheaper, Faster and Fabricated With an Inkjet Printer

upstart writes:

Stretchy, bendy, flexible LEDs: They're also cheaper, faster and fabricated with an inkjet printer:

Organic LEDs, made with organic small molecules or polymer materials, are cheap and flexible. "You can bend or stretch them -- but they have relatively low performance and short lifetime," [Chuan] Wang said. "Inorganic LEDs such as microLEDs are high performing, super bright and very reliable, but not flexible and very expensive."

"What we have made is an organic-inorganic compound," he said. "It has the best of both worlds."

They used a particular type of crystalline material called an organometal halide perovskite -- though with a novel twist. The traditional way to create a thin layer of perovskite, which is in liquid form, is to drip it onto a flat, spinning substrate, like a spin art toy, in a process known as spin coating. As the substrate spins, the liquid spreads out, eventually covering it in a thin layer.

From there, it can be recovered and made into perovskite LEDs, or PeLEDs.

Like spin art, however, a lot of material is wasted in that process -- as the substrate spins at several thousand RPM, some of the dripping perovskite splatters and flies away, not sticking to the substrate.

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