Polymer scientists over at the University of Akron might have stumbled upon a discovery which would make mobile device owners whoop with joy in the years to come – by working on a transparent electrode which is capable of churning out shatterproof displays. This group of researchers showed off just how a transparent layer of electrodes on a polymer surface could result in being tough and yet extremely flexible, capable of shrugging off repeated scotch tape peeling and bending tests.
This development might just change the way that conventional touchscreen displays are developed. At the moment, coatings made out of indium tin oxide are used on smartphone displays, but these tend to be more brittle in comparison, making them more likely to shatter when some force is applied, not to mention being more costly when it comes to the manufacturing process.
Tests involving this new film has seen it bent up to a whopping 1,000 times without any kind of detrimental effect. Thanks to its unprecedented flexibility, the transparent electrode can be cranked out in large numbers in economical, mass-quantity rolls. It would be nice to know just when will this shatterproof screen make its way to modern day mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, as I am quite sure that many of us have already suffered from the heartache of a broken smartphone display at least once in our lives.
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