| The image and photos show Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology's 'proto' system. Captured from Samsung Newsroom website |
By Kim Bo-eun
Samsung Electronics has developed stretchable organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display that can be attached to human skin by changing its shape, the company announced Sunday.
It said the elastic technology can be used for wearable devices that can monitor and display a person's heartbeat as well as other biometric data in real-time.
Published in the journal “Science Advances,” Friday, the research is the world's first that shows the viability of such a device based on the stretchable display technology.
The displays were developed by the tech giant's in-house R&D unit, the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, after successfully integrating a stretchable display with a photoplethysmography sensor into a single device.
“The strength of this technology is that it allows you to measure your biometric data for a longer period without having to remove the device when you sleep or exercise, since the patch feels like part of your skin,” said principal researcher Yun Young-jun who co-authored the paper.
Yun explained the technology can also be applied to wearable healthcare products for adults, children and infants, as well as patients with certain diseases.
The research team was able to modify the composition and structure of an “elastomer,” a polymer compound with excellent elasticity and resilience, and use existing semiconductor manufacturing processes to apply it to the substrates of stretchable OLED displays and optical blood flow sensors.
The team confirmed that the sensor and display continued to operate normally and did not exhibit any performance degradation up to a 30 percent increase in size from its static form.