Researchers led by John Rogers from the University of Illinois have developed a stretchable/bendable sheets of LEDs and light sensors. They are interested in applications that interface with the human body, and so they prefer inorganic LEDs to OLEDs as they are brighter, more reliable and are more easily made waterproof.

The team has printed an interlaced array of LEDs, on a rigid wafer, then dissolved the top layer of the substrate to release a thin network of LEDs that can be transferred to a flexible, waterproof polymer sheet. Each LED is just 100 microns across (about the width of a human hair) and 2.5 microns thick and is connected to its neighbors by serpentine strands that can accommodate the deformation of stretching and twisting. They managed to put the arrays on aluminum foils, leaves ,sheets of paper and around nylon threads.

University of Tokyo researchers developed a new kind of OLED display, that can actually stretch and deform - like rubber.They showed one displays that is shaped like a face, and showing changing expressions, and another screen that is spherical and shows weather data. The OLEDs were produced by spraying a layer of carbon nanotubes with a fluoro-rubber compound to produce a stretchy, conductive material.

The current prototypes are 100 sq centimeters, and have 256 monochrome pixels. They can be folded at least a thousand times, with no decline in quality. They are working towards better resolution and color displays.

"In the future, displays that once had to be flat can be made spherical, or even moving," says Takao Someya, professor of electronic engineering at the University of Tokyo. "A human-shaped display could be used to show medical diagnosis data, and there are various other applications."