End of fragile smartphones as scientists develop flexible screens

Scientists have finally found a reliable solution to our easily breakable smartphone screens by creating flexible and eco-friendly screens for our smartphones.

Professor Alan Dalton and his team from University of Sussex have created a way to make a kind of smartphone screens that are less fragile, cheaper and also environmentally friendly. Also, they use less energy, are more responsive and do not dull out when outside.

The current element indium tin oxide that is used for the screens is expensive and brittle. Indium itself is a rare metal and ecologically damaging to extract. What the scientists did was combining silver nanowires with graphene, a carbon material. The combination exactly matched the functioning of existing technology but with much lesser cost, reported Science Daily.

New smartphone with ‘holographic display’

According to the lead researcher Dr Matthew Large, unlike indium, graphene exists in large quantities which automatically lessen the cost for making a touch sensor. Graphene also protects tarnishing of screen in air by blocking air impurities to attack the silver. Even when the screen is bent, the electrical traits did not change which is not seen in the normal screens.

Professor Dalton further explained, “While silver nanowires have been used in touch screens before, no one has tried to combine them with graphene. What's exciting about what we're doing is the way we put the graphene layer down. We float the graphene particles on the surface of water, then pick them up with a rubber stamp, a bit like a potato stamp, and lay it on top of the silver nanowire film in whatever pattern we like.”

Moreover, according to Phys, the new technology can be used on large scale too through spraying machines and patterned rollers. “The addition of graphene to the silver nanowire network also increases its ability to conduct electricity by around a factor of ten thousand. This means we can use a fraction of the amount of silver to get the same, or better, performance. As a result screens will be more responsive and use less power,” Dalton added.