Wearable light emitting transistors for future communication devices

如今，显示和通信设备是辅助物品，由于体积、重量和尺寸，经常给用户带来运输问题，使得它们使用和携带不舒适且不方便。目前的技术和创新努力寻找替代基板，材料和想法，消除或减少这些不便之处。产品不仅尺寸和重量减小，而且灵活性提高。这些产品，包括电子阅读器或可滚动显示器，模仿了更传统的显示信息的形式，例如打印在纸上的信息。然而，所有这些应用都远远没有完全集成到我们社会的基本对象中。本提案旨在建立一种新的突破性技术，用于灵活，透明，舒适和易于携带的纺织嵌入式通信设备。实现这一目标的方法是构建第一个具有可控光发射的光纤嵌入式设备：完全嵌入织物中的发光晶体管。这将通过将有机半导体和石墨烯与石墨烯作为导电层相结合来实现，这是一种融合了柔性，透明度，石墨烯和有机半导体结合了联合收割机的机械柔性和光学透明性，具有优异的电子特性和低温加工性能，是非织造布的理想选择。常规的基材如纺织品的纤维。单层石墨烯厚度仅为3-4微米，不仅确保了高透明度，而且可以弯曲和拉伸。加上其坚固性和高导电性，它是替代当前金属电极的非常好的候选者。另一方面，聚合物和有机小分子呈现出从导体到绝缘体的广泛的电行为，并具有溶液加工的可能性。有几类有机化合物表现出半导体特性，并成功地用于有机场效应晶体管。有机材料的另一个优点是可以进行化学改性，以增加功能或改变机械和光电性能。这种独特的性能，与有机半导体器件显示技术的潜力相结合，使得可穿戴显示器的突破性想法成为可能。该项目的产出，纺织品嵌入式光电器件的开发，将是智能纺织品以及透明和柔性电子产品开发的基础。实现这一目标具有战略意义，以确保英国在这些研究领域的领导作用。这项研究的结果也可能在消费者应用中得到广泛使用。例如，该项目将允许开发全新的集成电子产品和显示信息的方法，能够嵌入到我们的日常服装中。由于纺织品在社会中如此普遍，将基于显示的信息和通信设备嵌入可穿戴纺织品的能力将使我们的服装变成移动的电话，显示电子报纸或GPS激活的地图，并且肯定会促进个人和社区之间的互动和交流。这种装置代表了传统技术的根本替代方案，因为它们必须弯曲、拉伸、压缩、扭曲和变形成复杂的形状，同时保持其性能和可靠性水平。在电子领域为这一未来奠定基础对于其他社会需求也至关重要，例如生物医学监测、感官受损者的通信工具和个人安全。

Nowadays, display and communication devices are supplementary items, many times posing transportation problems to the user, due to volume, weight and size, making them uncomfortable and inconvenient to use and carry. Current technology and innovation efforts look for alternative substrates, materials and ideas that eliminate or reduce much of these inconveniences. Products have been developed not only with reduced size and weight, but also improved flexibility. These products, including e-readers or rollable displays mimic more traditional forms of displaying information such as the information printed on paper. However, all of these applications are far from being fully integrated in basic objects of our society.This proposal seeks to establish a new ground-breaking technology for flexible, transparent, comfortable and easy to carry textile-embedded communication devices. The approach to realize this aim is to build the first fibre-embedded device with controllable light emission: a light-emitting transistor completely entrenched in a fabric. This will be achieved by combining organic semiconductors and dielectrics with graphene as conductive layer, in a novel concept that merges flexibility, transparency, optoelectronic properties and fabrication compatibility of these materials with textiles.Graphene and organic semiconductors combine mechanical flexibility and optical transparency with excellent electronic characteristics and low-temperature processing and are ideal for non-conventional substrates such as fibres of textiles. With just 3-4 Å thickness, monolayer graphene not only ensures high transparency, but it is bendable and stretchable. Together with its robustness and high conductivity, it is an extremely good candidate to replace current metallic electrodes. Polymers and organic small molecules, on the other hand, present a wide range of electrical behaviour, from conductors to insulators, with the possibility of solution processing. Several families of organic compounds present semiconductor behaviour and are successfully used in organic field-effect-transistors. Another advantage of organic materials is the possibility of chemical modification to add functionalities or change mechanical and optoelectronic properties. Such unique properties, allied with the potential that organic-semiconductor devices have demonstrated for display technology make it reasonable that a ground-break idea of wearable displays is achievable.The outputs of the proposed project, the development of textile-embedded optoelectronic devices, will be fundamental to the development of smart textiles as well as of transparent and flexible electronics. Achieving this goal is of strategic importance to secure a leading role of UK in these research fields. The results of this research are also likely to be of wide use in consumer applications. For instance, the project will allow the development of completely new approaches for integrated electronics and forms of displaying information, capable to be embedded into our everyday clothing. Since textiles are so present in society, the ability to embed display-based information and communication devices into wearable textiles would transform our clothing into mobile phones, displays with electronic newspapers or GPS-activated maps, and would certainly facilitate interactions and exchanges between individuals and communities. Such devices represent a radical alternative to conventional technologies as they must bend, stretch, compress, twist and deform into complex shapes while maintaining their levels of performance and reliability. Establishing the foundations for this future in electronics is also essential for other societal needs, such as biomedical monitoring, communication tools for the sensory impaired people, and personal security.