Samsung displays stretchable OLED screens in a prototype heart rate monitor

Samsung displays stretchable OLED screens in a prototype heart rate monitor. Samsung says it is planning on building screens that can actually “be stretched in all directions like rubber bands”.

The company also mentioned that the first applications for the material could be in developing stretchy health tech.

Of recent, the researchers of Samsung created an OLED display and the OLED display can actually be stretched by up to 30% while it works as normal.

As evidence of concept, engineers did integrate the display into a stretchable heart rate monitor. Which can actually be placed onto the skin like a sticking plaster.

Samsung Youngjun Yun’s Comment in a press release

Here is what Youngjun Yun of Samsung said in a press release concerning the prototype technology:

“The strength of this technology is that it allows you to measure your biometric data for a longer period. Without having to remove the solution when you sleep or exercise since the patch feels like part of your skin”.

He continued:

“You can also check your biometric data. Right away on the screen without having to transfer it to an external device”.

Though the display is rudimentary. However, it operated as normal after it was stretched 1,000 times, Samsung engineers say.

The heart rate monitor design, staying flush to the skin of the patient enabled it to raise a signal. That is 2.4 times powerful than a normal sensor.

While this technology is in the early stages of development only. Samsung still proposes that it could be used in supporting the formation of health-monitoring systems in the nearest future.

Yun said the technology can be expanded

Yun said:

“The technology can also be expanded to use in wearable healthcare products. For adults, children, and infants, as well as patients with certain diseases”.

You can actually stretch the display. Due to the fact that it is being developed from a uniquely designed flexible material which is called the “elastomer”.

The elastomer has actually been treated in such a way that it can withstand the integrated electronics. By the engineers of Samsung and it has this kind of grid-like island structure.

The islands of elastomer are being embedded with a standalone OLED pixel. And they are even more rigid than the surrounding channels. Whereas flexible electrodes are used in conducting electricity.

The bipartite structure enables “the spaces and wiring electrodes between the pixels to stretch. And shrink without the OLED pixels themselves becoming deformed”, Yun of Samsung says.

Well, do not anticipate the launch of the Samsung stretchable too soon. As the screens that are developed from the new Samsung technology are just too classic. To be used for anything aside from just normal monitors.

However, in the future, this kind of tech could develop wearable gadgets. Gadgets that are less stiff and very much comfortable.