This New Material That Could Forever Change How We Utilize Flexible Touchscreens.

Whether you are a fan of them or not, flexible touchscreens will be a major part of future technology in both the public and private sectors, and researchers at RMIT University have discovered a new material that could forever change how they are made. This new process is so unique that it could drastically reduce production times as well as production cost, paving the way for cheap, ultra-thin and flexible touchscreens in every home!

The ultra-thin and ultra-flexible electronic material could be printed and rolled out like a newspaper for the touchscreens of the future. (Image and caption credit: RMIT University)

The team, led by Dr. Torben Daeneke used a material called indium-tin-oxide which is the main component in many conductive touchscreens used in modern devices. The transparent material was heated to around 200C before being rolled on a surface similar to how a newspaper printing press works. This process creates a thin, crystal clear sheet of a glass-like material that is not only incredibly strong but is also highly flexible.

Because these flexible sheets are made out of the same conductive material that modern touchscreens are made from, they are 100% compatible with existing technology, making them easy to integrate into existing supply chains and manufacturing processes.

“We’ve taken an old material and transformed it from the inside to create a new version that’s supremely thin and flexible,” said Daeneke, an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at RMIT. “You can bend it, you can twist it, and you could make it far more cheaply and efficiently than the slow and expensive way that we currently manufacture touchscreens. Turning it two-dimensional also makes it more transparent, so it lets through more light. This means a mobile phone with a touchscreen made of our material would use less power, extending the battery life by roughly 10%.”

The new material is so thin that it’s measured on the nano-scale instead of millimeters like traditional touchscreens. Because of its incredibly thin form, it absorbs just 0.7% of light compared to common conductive glass touchscreens which typically absorb up to 10% of the light passing through it. This means that not only does it make devices lighter, but more energy-efficient, as well as the screen’s backlight, can be 10% less bright to achieve the same brightness when viewed with the human eye.

Additionally, the screens of conductive properties can be increased by increasing the number of sheets of the ITO material that are layered together to form the screen. This will allow engineers to develop more sensitive touchscreen, or simply tailor them to specific types of environments and use cases.

It’s a pioneering approach that cracks a challenge that was considered unsolvable, Daeneke said. “There’s no other way of making this fully flexible, conductive and transparent material aside from our new liquid metal method. “It was impossible up to now - people just assumed that it couldn’t be done.”

The team built a prototype touchscreen as a proof of concept, and are currently seeking a patent on the new technology. The team says that they see potential use cases in other technology such as LEDs and other optoelectronics such as solar cells and things like smart windows. “We’re excited to be at the stage now where we can explore commercial collaboration opportunities and work with the relevant industries to bring this technology to market,” Daeneke said.

I saw my first flexible touchscreen at CES in 2013, and I spent as much time rolling it back and forth in my hands until the booth attendant took it away from me. Flexible screens are just plain cool, and their applications seem virtually endless, but I have yet to see a practical implementation that was executed well. I hope that technology like this will allow these screens to become more versatile and affordable so that more engineers can get their hands on them to allow innovation magic to begin happening!  What are some use cases you can see flexible touchscreens actually being practical and useful in?

Source: https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/all-news/2020/jan/flexible-touchscreens