Future Electronics – full of flexible, transparent, conductive nanofibers ?
Electronics are among the rapidly and dynamically growing area. You may remember a recent time when the size of mobile phones or computers reached impressive proportions. The development is so far that the flexible display technologies or high-tech mobile phones are available on the market now. The targets are easy, cheap, ergonomic, and often organic products.
The next phase of electronics development will be a increaseof flexibility that would enable to reduce the electronics size while increasing of functionality and attractiveness. The key seems to be transparent electrically conductive polymer films, which may find applications as displays, solar collectors, or part of the new generation storage media.
Illustration photo from Shuterstock.com
ITO is one from the promising materials - electrically conductive indium oxide doped by tin oxide, which is used as a transparent coating with potential application e.g. as the part of new solar cells. This thin film is coated on the glass or polymeric substrate using expensive methods -physical or chemical vapour deposition. The big disadvantage of this promising material is flexibility absence. It breaks even at the minimum bend angles. The new publication "Flexible transparent electrically conductive polymer films for future electronics" deals with the production of transparent electrically conductive composite nanofibers prepared by hybrid method (a combination of electrospinning and solution casting methods). Conductive nanofibers are obtained from electrospinning and are partially incorporated in transparent foil. As suitable materials were selected these polymers: poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), polycarbonate (PC) or polyimide (PI).
The result was the new highly resistant and flexible composite that resists bending up to 180°. Flexible electronics will have great potential applications as well as deformable electronics (e.g. glasses with built-in displays). Another potential of these films are composites for glass heating in aircraft or cars. All these films were capable to be heated up to 70 ° C, with very short response time (within 20 s).
For more details, please, visit the original source: http://www.pure-sciences.com/physics/15727/