So I have been thinking about this a lot, and quite a few things have triggered my interest in the idea of a screen that can stretch, bend, and not use up a lot of electricity (This part didn't fit in the subtitle xD).

To start off, why do we use light bulbs to make screens? Because Thomas Edison discovered how to make one, and so far it has been by far the easiest way to create a screen to date because we have the technology to do it, and no more researching has to be done (Except to maybe make the lights smaller to add more pixels). Using millions of tiny lights is not a bad thing, and it has pros and cons to it, just as many things do. Lets list a few of them off.

Pros
- Can be used at night (Much better at night)
- We know how to make them, and use them
- Tech to make is cheap

Cons
- Hard to use during the day
- Lots of power used to turn on all these lights around the world
- Alternatives are nonexistent
- Screen is a solid and cannot be warped in any way or it will crack

The cons of a light bulb screen are not bad, and we live with them daily, but I believe we can expand past it. We must create a biological screen. =D

What sparked my interest into this (mostly) are 3 things:
1. The Cuddlefish
2. Morph, a futuristic phone that someone designed that could bend into any shape you wanted.
3. I love science =)

So 1, the Cuddlefish... If you have never seen or heard of a cuddlefish you need to watch these videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XLObuvEryg Shows the color changing abilities in a short clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW4PbW893ik Explains the science, and shows the shape changing abilities of the fish

Aren't they freaking AWESOME!? The videos aren't very good, and they don't show off the cuddlefish's camo capabilities very well but it is enough for what I want to say. So basically I want to make a cuddlefish screen. The way the cuddlefish's skin works is that it has 2 layers of colors. One layer is the base color kinda like primer, which shows through when the other layer isn't turned "on". The other layer has all the colors the cuddlfish can turn into built into its cells, and how it changes colors is through stretching out different colors of the skin so that is what the light bounces of off and "hiding" the other colors. Of course this occurs at a microscopic level, so we do not see the morphing of the skin unless the creature changes itself to look like a rock while changing colors.

Now I know we are a long ways from this, but biomechanical engineers have begun to be able to use electrical impulses from the body to send signals to machines (Like a mechanic arm or leg). If we can do this, then we can reverse this and send a signal to the cell to make it contract or retract. So basically what we need to do is:

1. Culture skin cells from a cuddlefish, and
2. Map out the electrical impulses needed to change the colors to the desired color
3. If the skin cells of the cuddlefish do not have the desired color, modify the genes of the skin to get it in there xD

Its that simple...! It sounds simple but its really not... but the theory is solid. If we do this (Which I'm sure someone will eventually, I want to be the first), then we will theoretically have a maleable screen because it will be a screen made of skin tissue that is given electrical impulses to make work.

The pros and cons of this type of screen are much different than that of a light screen. Here they are (Theoretically of course):

Pros
- Does not use much electricity to make the cells contract or relax
- No glare from the screen
- Bendable, and stretch
- Can be expanded upon, we could possibly add the ability to detect touching (Like a touchpad) by have the cells send a signal if they are touched, kinda of like how we feel things

Cons
- Cannot be seen at night (Unless modified to glow in the dark, or is given a backlight)
- Costs a lot to make, and will cost a lot to mass produce
- Tech to make this is nonexistent as of now

I hope everyone who reads this understands what I am trying to get at, I am not very good at explaining things in one go, so if any clarification is needed, or you want to discuss the theory behind what I have come up with just say so haha =)

If you want to see the morph phone video its here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n32mjY3668o

This video really got me thinking about a way to possibly make it. And I realized the first thing we needed, was a stretchable, bendable screen, that has the capabilities to become a touchscreen.

We are a far cry from any biological screen or touchpad, but I'm sure we will get there some day, or we will invent a new material that can function as a bendable screen (Heck they probably have already =O).

Anyhow, thanks for reading, and please reply, I love to talk about science, especially homemade ideas like the one I came up with.

~luzz

p.s. I hope I posted this in the right spot, I didn't know whether to put it under technology, or this one...

The right spot for this would be in the Technology and Computers section.

There are a bunch of problems with the bio-screen, and a million problems with the Morph phone

but the must basic problem of the bio-screen is logistics. Culturing cells requires finesse and lots of money and constant maintenance. Putting them on a screen for households is impossible as the cells will not survive. Even if you develop a device that cleans them and cultures them with expensive medium, they will still eventually die off after a number of generations. Even getting them to grow on a screen and not overlap each other is a near impossible challenge. Research nowadays only flirt with the idea of having multilayer cell cultures, and this is usually with experiments designed to have the culture die off in a few days.

However, the chromatophore cells' color changing mechanics might be interesting to look into.

Actually, we invented this a few years ago. It's already being used in commercially available cell phones. The only reason cell phones aren't bendy is because we prefer a rigid chassis.

Wat.

Light bulbs aren't used to make electronic screens, and they never were. Cathode rays were used to create older monitors, and lately LCDs have replaced them.

OLEDs are closest to which you are referring, and have the ability to bend and flex.

Yes, but life is full of problems that need solving right


Yes money would probably be the main problem in designing something's like this, but I think it would be worth it, we would learn a lot about cell regeneration and culturing if we can achieve something like this. Seeing as how they wouldn't survive, we would need to find a way to help them survive, either giving them the ability to photosynthesize to produce food, or giving them the ability to hibernate if put into unnatural circumstances. If possible, the cells would only give off co2 as a byproduct, and any cells that do get dirty or infected will die and be replaced by another. The goal here would also be to give the cells the ability to reproduce infinitely, or constantly rejuvenate itself with a protein it can make... Also, the cells would not overlap each other when culturing if you have made the cells correctly. Cells in the body of an organism like us have a chemical called the c chemical, that when produced, will shut down the cells reproduction cycle and cease growth. The chemical is produced when
A. Cells come into contact with each other (they won't reproduce if they are touching each other making a single layer of cells easily made
B. When the body is done growing and doesn't need to reproduce cells anymore.

So to make different layers, you would need to have the cells not recognized each other as a fellow cell, so they could be grown on top of each other without the worry of chemical c production.


This is close, but not exactly what I had in mind, it can bend, yes, but when the plastic rips its done for, also, it cannot bend, and stay bent, but it has to go back to its original state. Thank you for showing this to me though. I obviously didn't do much research on actual bendable screens, but kept my sights on the cellular bio screen.


I was talking about LED's when I said this, I knew that they were used to make modern screens because they don't burn out, and it's extremely easy to make them very small. But the original light bulb with a filament is what led to the discovery of it. I also didn't know that a cathode ray was used to make the first screens, so I was wrong in that regard. OLED is basically what aristocrat showed us with that YouTube video, but it's not exactly what I had in mind.

It can stay bent if it was covered with a more amorphous material, or sealed onto a curved surface. Being curved does not impede its functionality or shorten its lifespan (And when the skin of a fish rips, it's also done for, so I don't see what the problem here is.) There is no practical application for a bendy cell phone, however, so they elected to use a flexible covering which deforms elastically.

An animal cell is also substantially larger than a subpixel on an LED screen. In fact, with the high PPI screens in mobile devices right now, a single full pixel capable of displaying full 8-bit color is already only ~70µm, approximately the size of an eukaryotic cell. A single Cuttlefish cell is likely unable to display the full gamut of Adobe RGB or even sRGB, so even if you could somehow culture the cells to make them display based on an electronic signal, the image would look washed out and blurry due to the resolution being low.

Cells require constant nutrition to survive, while an OLED based on organic compounds that emit light can be used to create displays without the hassle of keeping a culture of cells alive.

LEDs aren't used either. Light bulbs used incandescence not electroluminescence which are two different phenomenon.

To aristocrat - Yes, OLED would work well, so I guess I can't invent it so would there be any application of this type of cultured matierial? I would think maybe short term camouflage would work if you could send the signals fast enough, but the cells would degrade eventually and quite quickly if they weren't given food. Using the chemicals that produce light when charged with electricity would still be better than a cultured skin of cells that can change color though.

To Sacrieur - LEDs aren't used in making screens and TVs? Then what is? Lol

LCD, plasma, and OLEDs

LCD screens use LED backlighting. LCDs don't produce light, they selectively transmit light. AMOLEDs are emissive displays.

So LCDs fracture the light kinda like a prism would, and only permit say... Yellow to go through so we see yellow? And OLEDs use biological chemicals that produce a color when given an electrocal charge. And they have to be active if you want the image to be able to move and such right? I think that's what it said, AMOLED meant that it was active in some way and PMOLED meant it was frozen like a picture? Or not turned on at all.

Sort of ... They change the amount of light that passes through by altering the state of the 'liquid crystal' with an electrical signal, and then there is a pigment in each one (red, green, or blue) in the case of a computer display. If you look really closely or get a magnifying lens you can see these different colored cells.
Also you know your generic digital clock or a calculator display? Those are LCDs. When the cell is 'on' it just blocks the backlight so it appears black. If you have polarized sun glasses, put them in front of the display and rotate either one and watch as the screen darkens and lightens ... That's the same kind of thing that's going on, just inside the display.