Theory promises brighter plastic LEDs

A new take on the theory of light-emitting polymers suggests that their efficiency could be doubled, a development that would boost the introduction of flexible displays or possibly reduce the cost of flat-panel displays which currently depend on more costly materials.

The new theory emerged from a joint project between scientists at the University of Mons-Hainaut in Belgium, the Center for Molecular Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Beijing) and the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta). The researchers worked closely with experimentalists hoping to identify new polymer species that would be competitive with other light-emitting materials. "The current work with polymer LEDs has been with the monochrome displays, but there has been much work on developing full-color displays, and there are prototypes that I have been told are really beautiful," said Jean-Luc Bredas who works at Georgia Tech. "With a lot of companies working in the area, plastic electronics is really coming."

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