Australian Researchers Have Found A New Material To Make Bendable Phones

Ayaan Bhardvaj - Nov 01, 2018

The new semi-organic semiconductor will open a new era of smartphone which is flexible and bendable

Recently, Samsung is rumored to release a bendable phone in the near future after 20 years of developing. Samsung’s head of mobile thinks that its time for new genre of the smartphone which is more preeminent than the current one.

Imagine you can fold a tablet and put in your pocket or have a wallet-size keyboard. If you think devices like that only exist on movies and scientific fiction, you may probably wrong because researchers from Australian National University (ANU) has developed a material that can be a key to make bendable electronic devices. This is a semi-organic semiconductor which is efficient at converting electricity into light. This is a very important detection which creates a first move on making bendable phones.

The semi-organic semiconductor is not only thin and pliable but also can be recycled easily because of being mostly composed by carbon and hydrogen. Every year, it is estimated that people release 50 million tonnes of e-waste to the enviroment. However, only 20% of them are recycled. This means that 40 million tonnes are polluting our Earth every minute. E-waste is really a big trouble in the world. They are believed to be one of the major causes of Environmental Destruction because it contains mercury, cobalt, etc which can be recycled and stay in landfills, waterbodies and others. If this material can be commercialized successfully, there will be an extremely decrease in e-waste.

From the experiments using the new hybrid compound, the researchers have found that the new semiconductor has a better performance than conventional inorganic-made semiconductors like silicon. Beside that, the researchers successfully developed the material molecule by molecule, like 3D-Print technology. The process is known as chemical vapour deposition.

If the material can be used in practical life, a new era of technology is opened with flexible and bendable smartphones, but the most important thing is that it will have a revolution in e-waste recycling.