Tacky wallpaper is, finally and forever… out. But glowing wallpaper, on the other hand, may be the decor of the future – providing people with wall art and greener lighting for their living spaces.
This may sound like a bit out of a bad science fiction novel, but it could be the reality of the near future. Swedish researchers along with an American coalition have designed a “flat-screen” wallpaper that can be produced from liquid solutions and rolled out as large, flexible “paper” from a printing press, and transferred to the walls of your living room.
The wallpaper was designed using the idea behind flat-screen technology, which uses organic light diodes called OLEDs, and comprises the screens of most modern TVs, computers and cell phones. However, OLED technology production is pretty expensive, and OLEDS are made of the rare and hard-to-recycle metal alloy indium tin oxide. The relative inefficiency of OLED technology led researchers to develop an alternative transparent electrode out of graphene, a carbon material. This technology is known as organic light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs), and could pave the way for a glowing wallpaper future.
“Once made commercially viable, glowing wallpaper could provide better widespread lumination across a room than traditional lightbulbs, be more energy efficient, easier to recycle, and create a super-cool, Tron-like atmosphere. Furthermore, the raw material for the fully organic and metal-free LEC is inexhaustible and can even be recycled as fuel.” Now that’s something to glow about.
[Via: mnn]
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