Saturday, March 22, 2014: With a new definition of thin, the engineers at the University of Washington (UW) have developed the world’s thinnest light emitting diode (LED). The LED is remarkably slim with a width of just three atoms, which can even be folded. Despite being thin, it is said to carry strong mechanical agility.
According to a CrazyEngineers report, Xiaodong Xu, professor of materials science at UW conceives that this compact technology can be used in forthcoming gadgets and electronic devices. It can be customised into flat-screens and wearable computers.
Xu and his team believes that this technological feat is a massive step in the age of shrinking technologies. This new LED is capable of doing all the things that are possible with current 3D or 2D LEDs. Diodes that are utilised in electronic circuits are physically 3 dimensional and are 10 to 20 times thicker than the new 3-atom thick. This new LED is almost 10,000 times smaller than a human hair. The light emitted by it can be realised via measurement equipments.
The researchers team reportedly used thin, flat sheets of tungsten diselenide, which is used in 2D LEDs. Apparently, this technology can be used in optic-interconnects in nano-scale computer chips.
