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Programmable polymer microarrays for tunable and flexible display

Project description

Bendable, stretchable display screens that respond to your touch better than ever

Most adults and many children now spend much of their day in front of some kind of screen, whether for work or play. The electronics behind the screens continue to advance at lightning speed, offering more and more services at increasingly lower costs and energy consumption. The EU-funded PPMTFD project has set out to enhance the capabilities of the screens themselves. Scientists are exploiting programmable polymer microarrays, unique materials that can change their properties including shape and dimensions in response to various inputs. The innovative screens will offer a significant increase in response speed while improving colour rendering, decreasing power requirements and enabling flexibility that can accommodate not only bending but even stretching and crimping for the next generation of smart displays.

Objective

The future is a world of screens. Not only TVs, computers, phones and open air screens, but also the surface of tables or walls, as well as the displays inside vehicles showing real-time information. Liquid crystal displays and organic light-emitting diode displays are now conventional displays that have been extensively used in smart phones, TVs, tablets and many other displays. However, their intrinsic limitations such as monotonous color, power needs and minimal deformations, significantly restrict future developments. In order to meet the increasing demand of portable electronic products and wearable devices, new display technologies including microscale and flexible displays with tunable properties are highly desired. In this proposal, I will design novel types of tunable and flexible displays based on programmable polymer microarrays (PPM). The core technology is that the displays response speed will be greatly enhanced by designing the structure of functional photochromic molecules. Photochromic spiropyrans (SP) and the fluorescent dye (perylene bisimide, PBI) will be introduced into PPM and used as energy acceptors and donors, respectively. The display process can be tunable through reversibly fluorescence resonance energy transfer between SP and PBI upon different light irradiation. This means that vivid color image displays will be able to be written, erased, and rewritten repeatedly. The new displays will possess advanced response speeds with new SP generated with a range of push-pull substituents. Importantly, the flexible polymeric matrix will expand the scope of display applications because of its stretchable, bending and crimp deformation ability. Moreover, the microscale feature of current designs will be beneficial for integrating displays onto the chip to meet the requirements of miniaturization of devices. The generated programmable and flexible optical microstructures would contribute to the next-generation platforms of smart displays.

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2019

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Coordinator

THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 224 933,76
Address
OLD COLLEGE, SOUTH BRIDGE
EH8 9YL Edinburgh
United Kingdom

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Region
Scotland Eastern Scotland Edinburgh
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 224 933,76
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