A Machine That Prints Light

I received an email from a reader with a link to a fascinating article on OLEDs. Do you know about this?

The size of a semitrailer, it coats an 8-inch wide plastic film with chemicals, then seals them with a layer of metal foil. Apply electric current to the resulting sheet, and it lights up with a blue-white glow.

You could tack that sheet to a wall, wrap it around a pillar or even take a translucent version and tape it to your windows. Unlike practically every other source of lighting, you wouldn’t need a lamp or conventional fixture for these sheets, though you would need to plug them into an outlet.

The sheets owe their luminance to compounds known as organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs.

Wow, this is quite interesting. I wonder how safe these chemicals are. Do you think that this has the potential to replace lightbulbs?

Read the whole article here.

Thanks, Forest!