Professor Kyung-Chul Choi of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced that he has developed a source technology for a fiber-based organic light-emitting display that can be applied to wearable displays.

This technology is a source technology capable of fabricating organic light-emitting displays on the fiber itself, and in recognition of its achievements, it was published in the online edition of the international journal 'Advanced Electronic Materials' on July 14.

Existing wearable displays have limitations in that they are attached to clothing to achieve aesthetic design, making them rigid and inflexible, which makes them difficult to apply in real life and difficult to maintain the properties of the fabric.

To solve the problem, the research team broke away from the conventional method of manufacturing organic light-emitting displays on flat substrates. Instead, focusing on the fibers that constitute the fabric, they fabricated an organic light-emitting display directly onto the fibers.

The research team stated that through this, they have realized a fiber display capable of utilizing display functions while maintaining the original properties of the fiber.

The core of this technology is the dip coating process, which forms a uniform organic layer by dipping a substrate with a three-dimensional shape, such as a thread, into a solution and then removing it.

This allows for the easy formation of organic layers on three-dimensional substrates, such as cylindrical shapes, which were difficult to fabricate using conventional thermal evaporation methods. Additionally, thickness control in the range of tens to hundreds of nanometers is possible by adjusting the extraction speed.

This technology enables low-cost, mass production through continuous production via roll-to-roll processing technology, and is expected to accelerate the commercialization of fiber-based wearable displays.

"Sunil Kwon, a doctoral student on the research team, said, 'Using this technology, it will be possible to manufacture wearable displays that can be worn as comfortably as clothing.'"

<Figure> Schematic diagram of a fiber-based organic light-emitting diode process using the dip coating method.