Light-Emitting Coaxial Nanofibers

Abstract

Ionic transition-metal complex (iTMCs)-based electro-luminescent nanofibers (TELFs) are developed by using coelectrospinning. A single TELF consists of a Galistan liquid metal core (cathode), an iTMC-based polymer shell, and an ITO thin film coating (anode). Lights emitted from the TELFs can be detected by a CCD camera at 4.2 V and seen by naked eyes at 5.6 V in nitrogen. The TELFs are structurally self-supporting but do not require a physical substrate (generally relatively bulky and heavy) to support them, rendering one-dimensional light sources more flexible, lightweight, and conformable. This technology can be beneficial to many research and development areas such as optoelectronic textile, bioimaging, chemical and biological sensing, high-resolution microscopy, and flexible panel displays, particularly as iTMCs with emission at different wavelengths are available.