I found this article in MIT Technology review interesing:
MIT Technology Review: Big and Bright Flexible Displays
Here’s a quick out-take:
The new electrode is a grid of highly conductive metal wires so thin that they are essentially transparent. Electrical-engineering and computer-science professor L. Jay Guo says that the electrode should be more flexible and less expensive than ITO, while not degrading the organic materials. The researchers incorporated the grid into an OLED as the top electrode and observed no visible difference in brightness between their LED’s light emission and that of a conventional OLED made with an ITO electrode, although Guo says that he and his colleagues will need to do more-detailed optical measurements to see how the two compare. The work is described in an online paper in the journal Advanced Materials.
What I found interesting about this article is that it indicates that an electrode can be made essentially transparently. Is this the starting block of a transparent solar cell? One of solar’s big drawbacks is the need for large roof-top installations. If we use our imaginations for a minute, a cheap, transparent, thin-film solar cell that could be applied via an adhesive could be easily installed on any window in any office building exposed to the sun. We could finally be able to tap into this renewable source in a big way, even if a bit inefficiently.
An interesting thought.
