Researchers have developed a flexible material that can be turned into a touchpad, stretchy touchscreen or even a controller for gaming.
The material is made using a network of soft and stretchable polymers to create a panel that's responsive to touch, just like glass on a phone, but that can essentially be worn or flexed into any shape or size needed.
The resulting 'controller' is made of a polyacrylamide hydrogel – currently used in ophthalmic operations, drug treatment, food packaging products, and water purification, among others – containing lithium chloride salts. The salts act as a conductor and allow the hydrogel to retain water.
By placing electrodes at each end of the panel, researchers from Seoul National University in South Korea found they could generate a uniform electrostatic field. This is key as it allows the circuit to close when someone touches the panel with their finger. Add in a controller board and a computer and the team found it could generate drawings (in this case, a man) and other uses, such as playing a virtual piano.
If that wasn't enough, Chong-Chan Kim and her team found that the touchpad still worked even when stretched to 1,000 per cent its original area. They did also note, however, that after 100 uses the resistance in the gel increased, which they put down to evaporation.
It's not the sort of breakthrough you can expect to see immediately reflected in the newest products hitting the shelves, but many hardware companies have been trying to master flexible devices for a while already, so research in the area can only speed up the development.
The research is published in the journal Science.