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www.dailymail.co.uk_sciencetech 2015 02606.txt.txt

#The full colour'skin screen'you can wear as clothing: Radical technology could let you alter your outfit instantly By Mark Prigg For Dailymail. com Published: 19:58 GMT, 24 june 2015 Updated: 20:01 GMT, 24 june 2015 It could allow soldiers to change the color and pattern of their camouflage instantly, and let indecisive dressers alter their clothing in a second. Researchers have unveiled the first fully flexible colour screen, and say it if so flexible it can be worn. They say the technology is based on a chameleon.''All manmade displays-LCD, LED, CRT-are rigid, brittle and bulky. But you look at an octopus, they can create color on the skin itself covering a complex body contour, and it's stretchable and flexible, 'said Professor Debashis Chanda of the University of Central Florida, who developed the technique for creating the world's first full-color, flexible thin-film reflective display. Chanda's research was inspired by nature, he said. Traditional displays like those on a mobile phone require a light source, filters and a glass plates. But animals like chameleons, octopuses and squids are born with thin flexible, colour-changing displays that don't need a light source-their skin.''That was the motivation: Can we take some inspiration from biology and create a skin-like display?''The team is able to change the colour on an ultrathin nanostructured surface by applying voltage. The new method doesn't need its own light source. Rather, it reflects the ambient light around it. A thin liquid crystal layer is sandwiched over a metallic nanostructure shaped like a microscopic egg carton that absorbs some light wavelengths and reflects others. The colours reflected can be controlled by the voltage applied to the liquid crystal layer. The interaction between liquid crystal molecules and plasmon waves on the nanostructured metallic surface played the key role in generating the polarization-independent full-colour tunable display. The display is only about few microns thick, compared to a 100-micron-thick human hair. Such an ultrathin display can be applied to flexible materials like plastics and synthetic fabrics. The research has major implications for existing electronics like televisions, computers and mobile devices that have considered displays thin by today's standards but monstrously bulky in comparison. But the potentially bigger impact could be whole new categories of displays that have never been thought of.''Your camouflage, your clothing, your fashion items-all of that could change, 'Chanda said.''Why would I need 50 shirts in my closet if I could change the color and pattern?''Researchers used a simple and inexpensive nano-imprinting technique that can produce the reflective nanostructured surface over a large area.''This is a cheap way of making displays on a flexible substrate with full-color generation, 'Chanda said.''That's a unique combination.'

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