Plasticizer-enhanced emissions from three OLED emitters with different colors. Credit: Wang Lab
The same class of chemical additive that makes plastic wrap pliable and vinyl flooring soft could be the key to unlocking the next generation of wearable displays. Researchers at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) have discovered that blending a common plastic softener into light-emitting polymer films makes those films both brighter and more stretchable.
The work, led by a UChicago PME undergraduate in the class of 2025, offers a surprisingly straightforward solution to one of the central challenges in stretchable OLED technology: making light-emitting materials flexible without reducing how efficiently they emit light.
"In the past, we'd been trying to come up with all kinds of complicated, new chemical structures for stretchable emitters," said Sihong Wang, an associate professor of molecular engineering at UChicago PME and senior author of the new study published in Nature Communications. "But this method is really simple; you just mix two things together, and one of them is a commercially available additive that people have used for decades to soften everyday plastics."
