Researchers at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA (CNSI) have developed a new light-emitting material that’s flexible, durable, and cheap to produce.
Due to its properties, this new material promises to be both durable and inexpensive to manufacture, holding great potential for chip-integrated light sources in photonic computation.
To achieve this feat, the team combined molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) with Nafion (a stretchy polymer normally used in fuel cells). The former is a “2D material” only a few atoms thick, known for electronic and optical properties but usually too fragile and dim for practical light-emission.
By stacking these two together in layers, the CNSI team created large, printable membranes that emit bright, stable light and can even be stretched without breaking. This is significant as typically MoS₂ and other 2D semiconductors were too delicate and emitted very little light.
Stretchy and stable
By combining MoS₂ with Nafion, the polymer not only reinforces the fragile material but also helps heal defects on the surface that usually kill light output. It also produces orders of magnitude brighter emission than MoS₂ alone.
Two-dimensional materials like MoS₂ have attracted intense research interest over the last decade. Ever since graphene was first isolated, scientists have been exploring similar ultra-thin crystals for their unusual properties.
Unlike graphene (which is a poor light emitter), MoS₂ has a direct bandgap, meaning it can interact with light much more efficiently. The problem has always been that single layers are fragile and give off only a weak glow, making them impractical for real-world devices.
Nafion itself is usually associated with energy applications such as proton-exchange membranes in fuel cells. It is flexible, chemically stable, and able to interact with ions. These traits turn out to be perfect for supporting delicate MoS₂ films.
The polymer doesn’t just act as a protective wrapper; it actively heals tiny defects on the semiconductor surface that normally trap electrons and quench light. The result is a hybrid material that is both robust and highly efficient at emitting photons.
By embedding the sheets in Nafion, the UCLA team managed to overcome both issues at once.
Could prove revolutionary for photonics
This new material could be very useful in things like photonics, where computing and devices that use light (photons) instead of electricity (electrons) are used. In these devices, light can move faster and use less energy than electrical signals.
We already use photonics in things like lasers, fiber-optic cables, solar cells, and smartphone cameras. For next-generation computers, light-based circuits could mean much higher speeds (since photons don’t collide and heat up like electrons).
It could also, in theory at least, lower energy costs (important for power-hungry applications like artificial intelligence). To this end, in the short term, such a material could open the door to new stretchable displays, flexible lasers, and chip-integrated light sources.
Longer term, it could also lead to a revolution in photonic computers that are faster and far more energy-efficient than today’s electronics, enabling breakthroughs in AI, data processing, and communications.
You can view the study for yourself in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.