A team of researchers has recently developed the first ever full-color, flexible thin-film reflective display that can change color.

Traditional displays like those on a mobile phone require a light source, filters and glass plates. But animals like chameleons, octopuses and squids are born with thin, flexible, color-changing displays that don’t need a light source.

Lead author of the study Professor Debashis Chanda from the University of Central Florida in US said, “All manmade displays - LCD, LED, CRT - are rigid, brittle and bulky. But you look at an octopus, they can create color on the skin itself covering a complex body contour, and it’s stretchable and flexible”.

Researchers were able to change the color on an ultrathin nanostructured surface by applying voltage. This new method doesn’t need its own light source. Instead, it reflects the ambient light around it.

The thin liquid crystal layer made by scientists is sandwiched over a metallic nanostructure shaped like a microscopic egg carton that absorbs some light wavelengths and reflects others.

The colors reflected by it can be controlled by the voltage applied to the liquid crystal layer. The interaction between liquid crystal molecules and plasmon waves on the nanostructured metallic surface played the key role in generating the polarisation-independent, full-color tunable display, said researchers.

The display is just few microns thick, as compared to a 100-micron-thick human hair. Such an ultrathin display can be applied to flexible materials like plastics and synthetic fabrics, they said.