Gold Nanomesh Electrode: A Step Closer to Foldable Flat Screen Portables

Researchers have invented an innovative electrical conductor which is stretchy and transparent. The breakthrough invention has been unveiled by the University of Houston researchers, who have moved the possibilities closer to reality.

Electric conductors are widely used in designing cellphone screens, flat screens TVs, your PC monitors and several other gadgets. With the invention of flexible electrical conductors, it would be possible to design flexible/foldable cellphone and flat screen TVs, and the utility might expand. The pioneer behind the development is a physicist at the University of Houston and principal investigator of Texas Center for Superconductivity, Mr. Zhifeng Ren. According to him, research to invent such materials had been underway for a long time, but it was almost impossible to think of a device with all three characteristics of flexibility, transparency and conductivity.

The material which made it possible is the Gold Nanomesh Electrode; a network of gold nanowires. It constitutes high conductivity properties, is transparent and quite stretchable at the same time. But flat screen TVs and Portable devices are not the only ones that are going to be benefited, as Ren says, the electrode also has potential to be applied in biomedical devices. Created out of the novel grain boundary lithography, the electrode has the minimum resistance to strains.