Oxford University Innovation technology wins IDTechEx Printed Electronics Award

4th December 2014

The University of Oxford's Prof Harish Bhaskaran and Dr Peiman Hosseini have been awarded the Academic R&D Award at the annual IDTechEx Printed Electronics Awards held in Santa Clara USA.

This award was given for the world’s first ultra-thin, flexible display technology, based on phase change materials (PCM) developed by the Oxford team.

“Printed, flexible and organic electronics will eventually impact most aspects of human endeavor, with the enabling materials, equipment, components and manufacturing being developed and launched today,” said the award organisers.

In a new breakthrough, Prof Bhaskaran and his postdoctoral researcher Dr Hosseini demonstrated the key technology for ultra-high resolution displays using a 7nm thin film of phase change materials. This was the subject of a recent publication in Nature (511,206–211 – 10 July 2014) and several patent applications. It is the first and only reported display device that utilizes the combination of both optical and electronic property modulation in PCMs.

Phase change materials such as Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) can reversibly switch between two solid states, amorphous and crystalline, in response to an electrically or optically induced stimulus. This switching is always associated with a change in the physical properties of the material (such as the refractive index). PCM have already played a key role in enabling data storage on inexpensive plastic substrates using optical pulses (e.g. CV, DVD, Blu-Ray).

Read more in ‘Nature’ features Isis flexible displays.

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