Scientists produce thinnest LEDs ever, just three atoms thick

If the future is really going to be about us wearing video-enabled clothing and having micro-thin technology, a team of researchers may have just guaranteed it, by producing the thinnest light-emitting diodes possible, which are just three atoms thick.

Light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, have been in use for quite awhile now, but they've been slowly taking over in all our technology, and pushing less efficient light sources out. As with nearly all our technological advances, the trend now is to make these smaller and more efficient, and a team led by scientists from the University of Washington have reached a milestone. They've built these incredibly thin, but strong and foldable LEDs from a molecular semiconductor material called tungsten diselenide.

"These are 10,000 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair, yet the light they emit can be seen by standard measurement equipment," said Jason Ross, a graduate student with the University of Washington's department of materials science and engineering, according to a UW news release.

Not only will this allow manufacturers to produce even smaller electronics, and push graphic display resolutions even higher, but given that these LEDs are semiconductors, they can be used in other applications as well.

"This is a huge leap of miniaturization of technology, and because it's a semiconductor, you can do almost everything with it that is possible with existing, three-dimensional silicon technologies," said Ross.

So, these ultra-thin LEDs could do with light what current computer chips do with electricity, and since LEDs produce much less waste heat than silicon chips, they would do the job much more efficiently.

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How did the researchers get the materials so thin? It wasn't done using some incredibly complex and expensive methodology. They did what anyone does when they want to extract two-dimensional materials ... they used scotch tape:

(Image and video courtesy: University of Washington)

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