Transient fiber-shaped flexible electronics comprising dissolvable polymer composites toward multicolor lighting

Abstract

An efficient way to solve the issue of electronic-wastes from lighting and display related products is to build water-triggered transient light emitting devices. Herein, we report an all-solution processing method to fabricate dissolvable and flexible light emitting fibers. Using a phosphor–polymer composite emitter sandwiched between core–shell fiber-shaped conductors composed of silver nanowires (AgNWs), the as-fabricated fibers exhibit uniform and omnidirectional light emission, together with excellent flexibility as well as mechanical stability. In particular, attractive multicolor light emission ranging from yellow or blue to white can be integrated into single fibers by scalable dip-coating of different phosphor–polymer composites rationally. Impressively, the fibers assembled from nontoxic emitting and conducting materials can be thoroughly dissolved in water, providing new possibilities towards alleviating environmental pollution caused by electronic wastes.